Only Love
by Midasgirl
Summary: Set after ALW - Christine and Raoul have married, and all seems to be going well. But fate will not allow Erik to forget her, and after the honeymoon, tragedy may offer him a second chance to win her back ...
1. Chapter I

Disclaimer; Erik, Christine and Raoul belong to Gaston Leroux. Nadir and Ayesha are Susan Kay's. Credit also to ALW. 

The title is the result of a major overhaul of the story, which wasn't going at all the way I wanted it; it is, of course, the title of a beautiful Frank Wildhorn/Nan Knighton song from _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ and just seemed to sum up the entire story as I wanted it to be.

A/N - This is set after the ALW musical. Not Susan Kay, though I have stolen a few characters from her; Nadir, of course, although I'm ashamed to admit that I've left out Ayesha this time. Sorry! Oh, and even though this looks R/C at the beginning ... Don't worry. I'm just being kind to Raoul :) As Christine Persephone said, I wouldn't dare write anything that wasn't E/C ;)

"Do you, Raoul de Chagny, take this woman, Christine Daaé, to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?"

Raoul looked at Christine, his face bright with youthful affection.

"I do," he replied.

He felt Christine squeeze his hand beneath the veil, and his face lit up with love and optimism, barely restraining himself from kissing her there and then.

"Do you, Christine Daaé, take this man, Raoul de Chagny, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

Christine smiled and blushed, dipping her head with shyness.

"I do," she whispered, meeting Raoul's eyes and warming inwardly at the depth of love she found there.

"You may now kiss the bride."

The cathedral was full, friends and acquaintances of Raoul's, all of Christine's friends from the Opera, and even a few who had come from Sweden for the occasion, funded by Raoul. Several of the women were weeping from sheer joy; Raoul was so good and noble, and Christine so beautiful ... it was so right that their union should have occurred.

Hidden in the shadows at the back of the magnificent cathedral, only one figure watched the proceedings without an outward show of emotion. Even had all eyes not been fixed upon the lovely couple at the front of the church, no one would have seen him. A black cloak and wide-brimmed fedora ensured that he was discernible from the shadows only by the slight motions of long, thin fingers unconsciously twisting in the cloak.

He closed his eyes briefly, tilting his head backwards as if to ease a headache and, for the first time in the lengthy Catholic service, taking his eyes from the lovely woman who stood shining in white at the front of the church, the gauzy mist of her veil creating a halo around her face as she leaned forward to meet the kiss of her new husband.

The lively sound of the organ struck up again, and the couple, radiant with happiness, made their way through the ranks of friends and family to the door into the sunshine. Such a perfect day for such a perfect couple ...

The uninvited spectator moved slowly to a small door at the back of the cathedral. Instinctively ducking into the shadows which protected him from the bright sunlight, he could see the carriage, trailing white ribbons, rounding a corner out of sight.

He drew his hat down a little further over his face, and sighed. For a moment, his perfect posture seemed to droop as he closed his eyes one last time, then he disappeared into the gloom of a backstreet, the darkness swallowing him up and leaving no trace that anyone unexpected had ever been at the Chagny wedding.

*          *          *

Erik ran his hands over the polished wood of his pipe organ, touching the keys with a gentle reverence, but for once, his long hands wrung no sound from the instrument. It was too late.

He sighed, and turned to survey the room. With the candles extinguished, it was in almost complete darkness, the rich furnishings and delicate wall-hangings barely distinguishable in the gloom.

He drew one last deep breath, and turned away from the place he had made his home for so long. Lifting the small valise at his feet, filled almost entirely with sheaves of music, he left the house, closing the door quietly behind him.

He would write to Nadir, and thank him ... perhaps give him a new address at which he could be contacted. Then again ... perhaps it might be better not to open himself once more to Nadir's well-meant interference. 

His resolve to start afresh where no one had ever heard of the Paris Opera Ghost had been a painful one, but eminently necessary. These days, every dark-haired girl he saw was her for one brief euphoric moment; every woman whose voice filtered down from the Opera above sent a fleeting blow of hope to his heart. _Even if she could never be his, just to be near her, to breathe the same air as her again ..._

It was impossible. He had seen the light in her eyes that day; even the blindest of men could not have missed the undeniable joy in her face as she ascended the carriage step, on his arm ... _she wasn't coming back. She would never return and there was nothing he could do to change that._

Erik sighed as he looked up at the dome of his Opera House, the facade partially obscured by a dark cloud drifting across the sky in the twilight. It would rain tonight.

He turned and disappeared down a sidestreet, melting into the darkness in a manner befitting a ghost ... a ghost who would never be heard of in Paris again.

*          *          *

Antoinette Giry stood on the steps of the Opera House, the breeze blowing around her with the electrical excitement of the knowledge that a storm was coming, exhilarated by the dark majesty of the threatening thunder clouds. 

A movement caught her eye, over in the Rue Scribe ... a shadow, almost, standing quite still, staring up at the Opera House with something resembling longing. She sighed, closing her eyes against the picture, and the guilt it brought.

She had been at the wedding, of course ... Meg had wept all the way through with joy for her friend, and even she had been forced to admit, it had been a beautiful day. Nothing but the best for the Chagny family ...

When she opened her eyes, the shadow was gone.

_~Two months later_~

Meg flopped down into her armchair and tore open the envelope, dropping it on the floor as she drew her legs up underneath her and started to read.

_Dear Meg,_

_       We're in __Italy__! I still can't quite believe it, this whole new life still feels completely surreal! Raoul has some business contacts here, so he's gone to lunch with them, and gorgeous as these flats are - overlooking a river with gondolas, can you believe it! - I get a little bored._

_       We've been to the opera, the ballet, and taken a gondola ride in the moonlight - it's all so romantic and beautiful, it's like something out of a fairytale!_

Meg scanned the rest of the letter; a page of news and detailing the romance and beauty of their honeymoon, and sighed, dropping it onto the floor and tucking her legs up under her chin. Christine sounded so happy ... Meg had a horrible feeling that one day she'd wake up and realise that life wasn't a fairytale after all.

"Just pray that Raoul is still her Prince Charming when it happens," Meg muttered, crumpling the paper and tossing it into the fireplace.

*          *          *

Erik sat back against the thick trunk of a tree, tilting his head slightly in a vain attempt to ease the inevitable headache.

For the first time since his arrival in England, he took out his musical notation book. A blank page stared back at him, mocking him. Music didn't work anymore ... he had begun to feel that there was something strangely depressing about writing music when he knew no one else would ever hear it. It had been different when Christine was here ... 

He sighed and stirred one elegant hand over the book, brushing the corners with his fingers. Despite his increasingly frequent attempts to tell himself that he had long since ceased to care for her, she was still there in his head, in his heart ... less a buried memory at the back of his mind than an ever-present torment in his soul, his recollections rubbing salt into wounds that were already almost unbearably raw.

He missed her so much that it was like an ever-present ache in his chest; her smile, her voice, the light brush of her skin against his ... 

Just for another hour with her! What a fool he had been to assume that a change of scenery would remove her from his mind ... just for another glimpse of her, even with Raoul ... he knew now with a sickening certainty that he would willingly spend the rest of his life in a cage simply for the chance to see her again.

Closing his eyes and resting his head back against the tree, he forced himself to think of something else.

It had been surprisingly easy to secure a place in an exclusive but private London hotel; having booked ahead of time, he had presented himself at the desk for just long enough to collect his key and leave instructions that the maid should not visit his room, before disappearing with customary ease. Perhaps living above ground would be easier than he had anticipated ... more than once he had adopted the guise of an eccentric Frenchman without even a basic grounding in English to avoid awkward situations on the street, and so far London had been good to him.

So far ...

A family, with two teenage boys and a small girl of perhaps five years, passed by, taking no notice of the shadowy figure seated beneath the towering oak.

Suddenly, the girl tripped, and the boys turned, their laughter abruptly silenced as they moved with concerned affection towards their little sister. Her wails split the air, quieted only when her mother, kneeling on the ground beside her, took her into her arms and began to sing a lullaby, very softly, her voice warm with love. Gradually, the child's tears turned to smiles and she permitted one of the two boys to catch her up into his arms and swing her around in circles, making her squeal with childish glee. 

Erik closed his eyes and passed a hand across the mask, resting his head back against the tree as he fought the ever-present headache.

All of a sudden he rose, slipping the book back under the folds of his cloak and drawing his hat down further over his face. Glancing quickly around, he moved silently out of the park, melting into the darkness of a backstreet that led to his hotel.

Upon arrival, he went straight up to his room and went out onto the balcony, clenching his fists on the railings and gazing out into the rapidly darkening night sky, dotted here and there with stars. He sighed, his thoughts many miles away. She would be on her honeymoon now ... he had heard rumours that they were touring Europe. Spain, or Italy perhaps ... Venice ... she'd love the gondoliers. 

He sighed again, the sound carried away on the wind and fading among the stars. 

The sound of laughter and chatter drew his attention to the terrace directly below his balcony. Couples sat at rounded tables with a smooth fall of linen, a single rose, cut crystal champagne flutes, lit by chandeliers sparkling in an undulating dance of crystal and light.

He turned away and sat down heavily on the bed, closing his eyes and clenching his hands around the bedposts. He _would_ forget her in time ...

*          *          *

Christine took a forkful of fish and put it into her mouth, glancing up at Raoul and smiling shyly as she caught his eyes on her. He smiled back and took her hand, stroking the back of her hand gently with one finger.

"Happy?" he asked softly.

She laughed and nodded. "Very," she assured him.

He touched her lightly on the cheek and rose, walking over to the window and opening it, allowing the moonlight to spill into their apartment. She stood up and walked over to him, laying her hands on his waist and looking over his shoulder to the view of the Venetian canal out the window, silver in the moonlight.

"This is all so beautiful, Raoul," she murmured into his ear.

"No ... _you're_ beautiful," he said softly, turning to face her and almost shyly tipping her head back so that he could look into her eyes.

As he bent to kiss her, Christine closed her eyes and tried to block out the soft splash of a gondolier poling his boat along the canal and humming a soft romantic aria. It was all just a little too close to home ...

"So," murmured Raoul, tilting her head back again and stroking back her hair. "Where shall we go next?"

Christine smiled and shook her head. "You choose," she said.

"All right then ..." he said slowly. "Well, I know you've been longing to see the Opera again ... perhaps a different one this time? How about England?"

Christine squealed and flung her arms around him. "Oh, Raoul, yes!" She kissed him impetuously on the cheek, tightening her arms around him. He laughed, and lifted her into the air, spinning her around for a moment before settling her back down to the floor and pulling her close.

"I love you, Christine," he murmured into the thick brown mass of her hair. She smiled faintly and touched his cheek with gentle affection.

"I love you, too," she whispered, burying her face in his chest in an effort to hide her tears.

*          *          *

Christine looked around the harbour, clinging to Raoul's arm. Everything was so busy ... she felt a little dwarfed. She heard Raoul call a porter to attend to their bags, and giggled softly when the man in question ignored him utterly.

"Raoul, dear," she murmured. "We're in England. I shouldn't imagine the young gentleman speaks French."

Raoul looked down at her for a moment, then his face crinkled. "I'm hopeless," he said, beginning to laugh. "Quite hopeless. How many hours did I waste in my youth having English verbs drummed into me?!"

She giggled and slipped her arm around his waist. "How long will it take us to get to the hotel?"

Raoul was frowning at a map. "Not too long, I hope. Do they have cabs in this city?"

She looked up at him in disbelief. "Raoul, you are a quite unmitigated barbarian! Paris isn't the only civilised city in the world, you know!"

He laughed and pulled her closer to him. "You know that I only married you to educate me."

She giggled and slapped him on the arm. "You're hopeless."

His arms encircled her. "Utterly." A porter passed, and Raoul hastily withdrew from Christine, hurrying over to him. Christine could hear him talking hopefully in broken English, and she felt a rush of affection for him.

She stepped over to him cautiously. "Is everything all right?"

Raoul smiled and slipped his arm around her waist. "Yes ... this gentleman is going to fetch us a cab to find our hotel."

Christine smiled radiantly. "This is all so perfect ..."

Raoul beamed. "I know. Something simply must go wrong to preserve the Shakespearean element of our relationship."

They both laughed.

The clouds drifting across the sky began to darken, and Raoul and Christine reached the cab just before it began to rain.

*          *          *

Erik drew his hat down over his face and entered the lobby, shaking the rain from his cloak. Moving automatically to the shadows, he glanced around the marbled room and felt his heart catch as his eyes alighted on a dark-haired girl standing at the reception counter, next to a taller blonde man who was signing a sheet of paper. He allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy that perhaps it really was her for a moment, aware of the danger of doing so; aware that he was incapable of resisting. 

And then she turned ...

And his heart stopped.

Flattening himself back against the wall, his heart suddenly hammering, he watched in disbelief as she turned back to Raoul, laughed, tossed her hair back, and followed him up the stairs, trailed by the dutiful hotel porter.

He remained motionless for another long moment, willing his heart to slow, forcing himself to breathe steadily, the cold marble of the wall a knife in his back.

"Excuse me, mademoiselle ..." Keeping his voice low and mysterious, at its most persuasive, he drifted out of the shadows and beckoned to the small stocky receptionist, "May I ask ... the lady who was just here ..."

"Oh, the lady with the dark hair? Oh, she is lovely, isn't she?" The girl, plain and dumpy, and evidently appreciating beauty wherever she might find it, sighed in envious adoration. "She's a viscountess, you know ... she and her husband are on their honeymoon, and he's such a lovely gentleman, and so very handsome ..."

Erik flinched behind the mask, but the gregarious little receptionist kept talking oblivious, evidently thrilled beyond words at the fairy-tale love story unfolding before her very own eyes.

"And he's such a gentleman, so very good and noble, and they're so very much in love, you can tell, it's wonderful ..."

Erik turned away, not trusting his voice to thank her for what had been somewhat more information than he had desired. Drawing his cloak closer around him, he ascended the stairs and locked himself into his room, trying to ignore the fact that his hands were still shaking.


	2. Chapter II

A/N – This chapter is _very_ Raoul sympathetic because I just got back from seeing Phantom again and I'd forgotten just how wonderful Matt Cammelle is. So, this is largely based on his interpretation - and yes, he does stroke Celia's hair a lot in his performance!

Thank you so much to all my reviewers - hope you enjoy :) But is this too far-fetched? Is it all just too coincidental? Please let me know!

*          *          *          *          *          *

Erik crouched in the corner, his face turned away from the light, his hands covering his face, his heart pounding and his mind moving frantically.

_How was it possible?_ By what cruel twist of fate could they have ended up in the same country, when she had all the world to choose as her playground? And _the same hotel?_ What God could be so malevolent as to find amusement so?

Aware that his distress was threatening to overwhelm him, he rose unsteadily, looked frantically around, and began, with the frenetic speed of panic, to throw his few belongings back into his suitcase. There would be time enough to press the inevitable wrinkles caused by careless packing out of his clothes when he was ... oh God, _anywhere_ but here ...

A sudden faintness swept over him and caused him to sit down sharply. Her face rose before him, and he buried his face in his hands, cursing the weakness she inspired in him.

A knock at a door halfway down the corridor had him on his feet with a sudden bolt of panic, nervous energy pulsing through him and rendering inactivity quite impossible. He crumpled a shirt into the suitcase and slammed it shut, struggling to keep his fingers from trembling long enough to fasten the lock. In a fit of frustrated anger at his failure, he hurled the suitcase halfway across the room, where it burst open, distributing his few possessions over the furniture.

Erik drove his fist into the wall in a mix of frustration, anger, and an overwhelming wave of desperate misery, sinking to the floor as he finally, for the first time in the most agonisingly painful six months of his life, gave in to the overpowering tide of blackening anguish which was threatening to claim him once and for all.

*          *          *

Rose Banks sighed and tugged ineffectually at her painfully tight bun. _I hate this job,_ she thought miserably, forcing her face into a porcelain smile as a client walked by, throwing her a curt nod. _And still - _she glanced at the clock and groaned silently - _three hours to go._

She closed her eyes for one moment, hoping to ease the tension behind her eyes and the ache in her temples. She opened her eyes and groaned inwardly, forcing herself to smile brightly again as a man dressed in expensively tailored, tasteful evening wear made his way up to the desk, his hat drawn low over his eyes in such a manner as to render any view of his face quite impossible. 

He spoke, with a very faint French accent. "Room 279, please, I would like to settle my bill."

He moved with fluid grace, distinctly feline, but he seemed hurried. _Nothing unusual there, then,_ she thought with mild irritation, but as she searched through the files for his bill, watching him from below lowered eyelashes, she realised that what she had at first taken for impatience was actually acute distress; he was shaking from head to foot and his fingers were clenching convulsively around the handle of his small suitcase.

Rose found the room in the files and looked up in surprise. "But sir, you've booked in to stay another month."

"I know," he said shortly. "I'll cover the difference if necessary." He withdrew a wallet from a pocket in his cloak and waited expectantly. "If you'll forgive me, mademoiselle, I am rather in a hurry."

"I ... hope the service has not been lacking in any way?" Rose asked anxiously, confused. "If there's any way we can persuade you to stay ..."

"I thank you, no," he said curtly. "I find urgent ... business calls me away from town."

"Oh ... all right ..." Rose murmured, still slightly confused over the man's inexplicable attitude. "Sir, are you all right ... would you like to sit down?"

The man's fist thumped down on the desk. "I thank you for your concern, I am quite well! But I am in a hurry and I should like to pay my bill and be on my way as soon as possible!"

Rose recoiled and began hurriedly to tot up the bill. "I'm afraid I'll have to charge you for the extra month," she mumbled, not looking at him and shrinking back in her seat as if she feared a violent reaction.

The man sighed, perhaps in regret at having frightened her. "That's quite all right," he murmured, his hand moving restlessly on the counter. Rose handed him the sheet of paper nervously, snatching her hand back as soon as his fingers closed around the paper and staring down at her hands. He barely glanced at it before tossing a wad of notes down onto the reception desk and counting them swiftly. He laid the correct sum on the desk - in a surprisingly short time, for a foreigner - and gently dropped a pound note beside it.

"Thank you for your help," he said gently. "And please do forgive my abominable rudeness."

By the time Rose looked up to thank him in astonished gratitude, he was gone.

*          *          *

Christine was curled beneath the sprawling branches of a twisting old oak in the hotel grounds, sketching a tree in the distance and rapidly coming to the conclusion that she should stick to singing as her only artistic accomplishment. She looked up and smiled as she saw Raoul coming towards her; but her smile quickly faded as she realised he was frowning.

"What is it?" she asked with concern.

He looked up at her and gave her a fleeting smile. "I'm sorry," he murmured, brushing a lock of hair away from her cheek. 

"What is it?" she repeated, nervousness beginning to spread through her.

He laughed and sat down under the spreading oak tree, motioning for her to join him. "Something's come up," he said. "I have to meet a business contact from Paris in an hour."

Christine looked up at him in dismay. "Oh, Raoul!"

He sighed and passed a hand across his face. "I know. I'm so sorry. There really is nothing I can do about it; there are problems back on the estate I have to sort out." He touched his hand lightly to her cheek. "I'll make it up to you," he promised anxiously.

Christine slapped his arm lightly and laid her head back against his chest. "It's not your fault," she conceded with a half-smile.

They sat together in silence, Raoul's arms protectively around Christine, as they watched the light dapple over the trees. Finally Raoul heaved a sigh and ran his fingers gently through Christine's hair. 

"I have to go," he whispered. Christine made a little noise and turned her face towards his chest.

"No ..." she murmured sleepily. He laughed softly and stroked her hair. 

"Come on," he whispered. "I'll walk you back to the hotel."

"No ..." she murmured, sitting up with an effort. "I'll take a walk around the grounds before dinner, I think ... you will be back for dinner?" as an afterthought, looking anxiously up at him.

Raoul nodded and kissed her gently on the forehead. "Of course," he assured her. He rose slowly, stretching, and offering her his hand to help her up. "You'll be all right?"

Christine laughed and pulled her hair back in an unthinkingly graceful motion, brushing the grass off her skirt. "I'll be fine."

Raoul kissed her once more and set off back to the hotel, leaving Christine alone under the oak.

*          *          *

Erik closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cold brick of the building behind him, his head throbbing with what had started out a mild ache in his temples and which was now threatening to become a migraine. 

He opened his eyes again and watched Raoul kiss Christine lightly, the easy contact of long familiarity and gentle affection. He was aware of his hands twisting convulsively in the material of his cloak as he watched Christine settle into her husband's arms and lay her head against his chest, closing her eyes and moving sleepily against him. She looked so _happy_ ... his heart wrenched.

_This is what you wanted,_ he told himself savagely, standing very still, his body quite rigid, refusing to allow himself the luxury of weakness. _This is what you wanted. You wanted her to be happy, and now she is. You wanted her to be a diva, and now she is. You wanted her to be secure, and now she is. _

_I wanted her,_ his mind whispered in hopeless response.

He slammed his fist against the brick wall in anguished frustration, barely feeling the pain.

_She is secure. She is happy. He loves her. _The words repeated like a mantra in his head. _Secure. Happy. He loves her._

_I love her._

This time the force with which he slammed his fist against the wall split a gash along the length of his hand. He stared down at his hand and the blood seeping from the wound in anguish - always more blood. What sort of life would that have been for her? Darkness and blood, the two things she feared above all else ... 

Erik stared at her with despairing longing, his hands clenched desperately in his cloak. He saw Raoul shift her from his knee to the ground, saw him take her hands in his and help her up. His hands tightened on the folds of his cloak in pain as Raoul bent to kiss her, gently brushing his fingers through her hair.

He barely watched Raoul for three steps after he had left Christine, his eyes drawn automatically back to the lovely young woman who now stood alone under the towering spread of an oak. The whole effect was so Caspar David Friedrich that it made him catch his breath, and for a long time, he stood very still, watching Christine drift aimlessly from one tree to another. She looked desperately alone and heartstoppingly lovely in the twilight, just the angel he had always known her to be. He fought the urge to go to her - _just one last conversation, one more -_ and instead, hidden in the shadows, his hat pulled low over his face, he watched as she drifted slowly towards the hotel, disappearing from view as the heavy door closed behind her.

He took one deep breath and stood motionless for one long moment in a futile attempt to still the tremor of his hands. Then he lifted his case and began to make his way slowly towards the road where he might catch a cab.

Had he been less distressed at watching Christine and Raoul together, he might have been watching where he was going a little more carefully.

*          *          *

Erik pulled his hat low over his face and, steeling his courage to step out into the crowd, forcing down the instinctive agoraphobic panic, gathered his suitcase more securely under his cloak and left the protective curtain of the shadows.

Keeping his head bent, he hurried through the unbearable crowds, barely looking where he was going, until he felt himself collide with another person.

"Oh ... forgive me, Monsieur ..."

Her voice sliced through his mind with sudden blinding fireworks of recognition. He looked up, and as their eyes met, he felt the ground melt away from beneath his feet. For a moment, they stared at each other, each too shocked to speak, then, as Christine made a move towards him, he forced back an overwhelming sensation of dizziness, and, sweeping his cloak around himself, disappeared.

Christine found herself reaching out to empty air, a name unspoken on her tongue.

She glanced wildly around the crowded street, her hands still outstretched, her eyes seeking in vain.

"_Erik?_" It came out as a strangled whisper, barely a whimper, more a plea for help than anything else ...

Her head began to spin painfully; she saw the world blacken slowly, felt herself falling backwards as if in slow motion, and felt his arms close around her just before she passed into merciful oblivion.


	3. Chapter III

A/N - Yami - why did Christine faint? Shock, a too-tight corset, force of habit - all, any or none of the above. And I used Rose's surname and not Christine's simply because we already know Christine and everyone already knows her name (she isn't Daaé anymore incidentally, she was married in the first chapter) but Rose is a new character (who won't be reappearing, I might add, she was just a cameo really) whom we hadn't met before, and I thought it would be appropriate to introduce her properly. 

The Marquis de St. Cyr is a character some of you may recognise as from the Scarlet Pimpernel (just for you, Maya!!) He wasn't chosen for any particular reason - just wanted a familiar face in there!! So he belongs to Baroness Orczy or Frank Wildhorn and Nan Knighton (although his character development is _all mine_!)

Thank you guys so so much for the reviews - and I'm so so sorry it's taken me so long to update. 

*          *          *          *          *          *

Christine's eyes fluttered open. Disorientated and confused, she lay perfectly still for a few moments, trying to gather her bearings.

It all came back to her in a rush of memory, and she sat up instantly, looking around for him in sudden apprehension.

It took her a moment to distinguish him from the darkening sky, his heavy black cloak blending into the shadow cast by the tree under which he stood. He raised his head slightly, and the flash of white that was his mask sent another wave of faintness over her. He was beside her at once with one of the lightning movements she remembered so well, cold hands on her shoulders preventing her from falling.

In spite of herself, the unexpected coldness of his hands made her shiver, and he withdrew instantly, rising and turning away to stand a few feet away from her, barely distinguishable from the darkness.

Christine fought for words, searching her mind frantically for something to say. Erik turned slowly back to face her, his face hidden by the shadows.

"Are you all right?" he asked expressionlessly.

Christine struggled to sit up again, conscious of how foolish she must look, grateful that he had broken the silence. "Yes, of course," she managed, pushing herself up and leaning against the tree for support.

He nodded, inclined his head formally towards her and turned to leave. Christine reached out in dismay, stretching out her hand unconsciously to him.

"Erik, wait!"

He halted and turned slowly to face her, his expression unreadable, one eyebrow raised questioningly. Christine flushed and withdrew her hand, suddenly awkward.

"I just ..." she began lamely, flushing an even deeper red.

Erik made an elegant, questioning gesture in the air with one long hand. "You just ...?" he repeated flatly, folding his arms under his cloak.

Christine struggled to her feet, trying to resist Erik's discomfiting efforts at intimidation, wishing he were not quite so tall. 

"I ... you followed us here?"

He laughed humourlessly. "Actually, no ... you followed me here. Not quite the reception I was expecting, I must admit."

"_What?_"

He sighed, brushing a hand across his face, for a moment forgetting to keep his face angled so that the shadows hid the mask. "I have been in England for about four months now," he said wearily, leaving her to draw her own conclusions.

Her hand flew to her mouth, and for a moment he thought she might faint again.

"Oh God." She drew a deep breath and looked up at him helplessly. "I didn't know."

He made an elegant, graceful little shrug. "How could you have done?"

Her eyes dropped to his suitcase. "You're leaving?" The thought that she had driven him first away from the place which had been his home for almost thirty years, and now even away from a foreign country, affected her more than she would have expected.

"So it would appear."

As Christine searched frantically for something to say, her mind unwittingly flew back to their previous relationship at the Opera. The contrast was painful and unavoidable; the immense power and grace with which he had always been invested had somehow deserted him, and now he just looked tired; he was thinner, less charismatic, his voice somehow devoid of that unearthly resonance which had always so captivated her. He might have been any man, she realised suddenly. Any man rejected and abandoned ...

She closed her eyes over sudden tears, and realised when she opened them that he had turned away from her and was now standing with his back to her, staring out across the darkening hotel grounds to the lake.

"You don't look well," she said uncertainly. "Are you all right?"

Erik ignored the question and picked up his suitcase with an air of finality.

"You are going to be late for dinner," he said flatly. "Can you walk?"

Christine looked away, through the sheltering branches of the willow, to where the sun was setting glorious red over the hotel lake.

"Yes," she said sadly, wondering briefly whether he would have picked her up again had she said no.

He nodded and tilted his hat to her. "In that case, if you'll forgive me, I'll leave you to make your own way back to the hotel."

Christine nodded slowly. This was the way it had to be, after all ... 

But her sense of duty to Raoul, and the common sense which told her further encounters could only bring further pain, to both of them, did not stop her asking, "Will I see you again?"

There was a long pause which seemed interminable to both of them. 

"No," he said shortly, and dissolved into the darkness.

Christine stood very still under the tree for a long time, before finally she began to walk slowly back towards the hotel.

She did not turn to look behind her. Perhaps, if she had, she might have seen a tall dark figure step silently out of the shadows under the spreading branches of the weeping willow, and watch the hotel door close behind her with something very like despair in his eyes.

*          *          *

Christine bent over the sink, splashing cold water over her face, swallowing the desire to cry. __

_This is how it has to be,_ she told herself fiercely. _What would Raoul say?_

Guilt rising in her throat, she hastily turned away from the mirror and scrubbed her face savagely with a towel, throwing the towel down onto the floor and beginning to pace distractedly up and down the room.

Raoul_._

How could she ever face him tonight? It was impossible that she should keep this painfully fractured meeting with his greatest enemy hidden from him; but how could she ever explain to him the tangled mass of contradictions that were her feelings for Erik?

She stopped and distractedly dragged a hand through her hair, looking hopelessly around the room and feeling the guilt almost choke her.

"Christine?"

She jumped violently, turning around, her heart hammering with shock.

"Raoul!"

He stood in the doorway, carrying a single pink rose.

"For you," he said with a smile, offering it to her and bending to kiss her on the cheek.

"Oh!" She took the rose and lifted it to her face, inhaling the familiar sweet scent that brought back a rush of memory she had been trying so hard to suppress. "Thank you."

"Are you all right?" he asked with concern, his eyes flickering over her. "You don't seem yourself."

"Oh no!" Christine floundered. "No, no, I'm fine. You just startled me, that's all."

He was still looking at her slightly oddly, but then he smiled and took her hands. "Christine, I'd like to introduce you to someone. Do you ever recall my telling you about the Marquis de St. Cyr?"

Willing her heartbeat to slow, smoothing her hair back with her free hand, Christine nodded. "Yes ... you said that his parents were family friends ..."

"And St. Cyr and I have always stayed close. That's it. He's been in England for a month or two now, and he's most anxious to meet you. I thought now would be a good time ... but if you'd rather not ..."

"Oh no, that sounds wonderful, do ask him to come in," she said, too quickly. 

Raoul was still watching her closely. 

"What's wrong?" he asked gently, moving to brush her hair back from her face.

"Nothing!" She could hear the false note in her voice, and hated herself. She forced herself to take a step forward and put her arms around him. "Nothing. You just ... startled me, that's all." She forced a laugh. "Really, Raoul, do ask him to come in."

Raoul gave her another slightly strange look, but nodded and stepped out into the passageway for a moment. She heard a brief buzz of conversation, and hastily smoothed her hair back from her face, trying to make herself presentable.

Raoul entered the room, and with him was a man of about the same age, with dark curly hair and hazel eyes, slightly taller than Raoul, lightly built with faint laughter lines crinkled around his eyes and mouth.

Raoul beamed, taking Christine's hand and looking from one to the other.

"Christine ... I'd like you to meet the Marquis de St. Cyr."

She curtseyed awkwardly, flushing slightly under the intense eyes of the Marquis.

"St. Cyr ... my wife, Christine."

"Enchantée, madame," he murmured, kissing her hand lightly. He glanced her over, then smiled, a dimple appearing. "You've chosen well, Raoul."

"What, am I a horse to be selected from the market?" Christine asked. Her tone was light, but the Marquis must have realised what offence he had caused, for he knelt before her in contrition. 

"Forgive me, madame," he said quietly. "I did not mean to offend. You are ... of course, much more than a horse."

She smiled tightly. "While I'm still not sure that's a compliment, thank you."

St. Cyr smiled and took her hand. "I'm afraid I've offended you. Please do accept my sincerest apologies for having done so - it was quite unintentional." He smiled suddenly, a flash of humour in his dark eyes. "I fear this is doubtless the reason why our silver-tongued Raoul has won himself such a beautiful bride and I remain, alas, single." Raoul laughed and Christine had to smile. 

"I'll leave you two alone now - Raoul, I'll see you in the bar later?"

Raoul nodded and took his friend to the door. The two men talked for a moment, then shook hands and St. Cyr left the room.

Christine entwined her fingers with Raoul's and laid her head on his knee. "He seems nice," she said automatically, her mind elsewhere.

Raoul nodded and stroked her hair. "He is. He and I have known each other for a very long time - I know he doesn't come across terribly well on a first encounter but he really is a good man. I'd like you to get to know him a little better."

Christine nodded automatically. "I'd like that." She rose cautiously, faking a yawn. "Raoul, I don't feel terribly well; would you mind if I didn't join you for dinner tonight? I think I'll just go to bed and try to get some rest."

Raoul took her hand in concern, his tenderness sending a fresh wave of guilt over Christine. "I knew there was something wrong. Is there anything I can do? Am I to send for the doctor?"

"No ... no, it's just a headache ... I think a good night's sleep should clear it well enough."

"Would you like me to stay with you?"

Christine shook her head, avoiding his eyes. "I'll be fine - I think I just need a good night's sleep."

Raoul rose slowly, confused and hurt. He knew Christine well enough to tell when she was failing to tell him the absolute truth, and the thought that she felt she could not share her troubles with him hurt him unbearably.

"All right," he said uncomfortably. "I'll be up later; try to get some rest. I'll only be downstairs in the bar if you need me; promise me that you'll call the maid if you do?"

Christine forced a smile. "Of course."

He kissed her very gently and left the room, taking care to close the door quietly.

When he returned to the room two hours later, Christine was curled up in bed with her face hidden in the shadows. She did not move when he whispered her name, and he assumed she was asleep.

He did not see her turn to watch him with guilt in her eyes as he slept.

*          *          *

Erik finished unpacking his suitcase and looked around the small, dingy room. No more the marble columns and concierge service of his previous hotel, he was sure to avoid encountering the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Chagny here. His room was small and uncomfortable, but comfortingly dark, the window barely functional for either the purposes of letting light in or air out. He sat down cautiously on the bed, wincing at the lumpy mattress. The entire hotel was cold, dark, gloomy, and deeply unsettling - _almost like home,_ he reflected wearily. 

He touched two long fingers to the case of his violin, and for the first time in months slowly undid the catches and removed the instrument. He sat staring down at it for a long time, remembering how he had played for her.

Remembering the absorbed adoration with which she had knelt at his feet to listen.

He drew a shaking hand across the polished wood of his violin. It had been so long since he had been able to play - so deeply had he repressed emotion, stifling it under layers of self-imposed indifference that composition seemed impossible, and any piece he could think of to play held some agonisingly painful memory he could not bear to recall. Music would forever now appear to him as a manifestation of Christine - and he simply could not bear to think of her. Remembering all that had happened between them was too deeply painful to consider, and her words to Raoul on the roof of the Opera Garnier the fateful first night of _Il Muto_ now prevented him from deriving any pleasure even from the time when he had been her tutor ... even before she had seen his face.

If only he had not heard her that night! Had he not heard the anguish in her voice, seen the wild terror in her beautiful eyes, he could have comforted himself with delusional memories of the times he had played for her, read to her, carried her to bed when she had fallen asleep in his arms ...

But her words that night had put paid to all his memories, everything that he had been clinging so desperately to prove that she had cared for him once - however fleetingly, but once!

Erik passed a hand over his face and recoiled as his fingers touched the cold surface of the mask. He shuddered and bent over with pain, clenching his hands into fists against his eyes.

With a lightning fast movement, he kicked the violin case into a dark corner of the room, where it lay, half hidden in the shadows, sending up a cloud of dust, and disturbing a rat which dashed out and took refuge under the bed.

Erik rose stiffly and crossed the room to the small square window, staring blindly out into the dark of the night, London bustling and laughing below him.

He had not intended to stay; since his first glimpse of her at the hotel, he had known that the only possible way to prevent disaster was for him to leave immediately; his shadow could only darken their life together and bring further tragedy crashing down on all three of them. But he had not counted on their meeting; and it had been that chance encounter that had crippled his resolve and drained his strength to resist her. As long as he remained in London, there was a chance that he would see her again; and as long as there was that chance, he could stay alive.

*          *          *

In the next few weeks, Christine saw a lot of St. Cyr, and slightly to her surprise, began to like him very much. The problems on Raoul's estate back in France had magnified, and he was having to leave Christine on her own more and more often. St. Cyr had been a frequent companion - rather more, she suspected, due to Raoul's earnest desire that they should be friends than to any great liking on his part - but as the days wore on and they spent more and more time together, they became easier together, and by the end of Christine and Raoul's planned stay in England, were as fast friends as Raoul had ever wished them to be.

Christine awoke slowly, stretching luxuriously and slowly opening her eyes against the sunlight. She saw Raoul smile and stroke a lock of tangled hair away from her forehead, his fingers playing gently along her cheek.

She smiled sleepily and snuggled closer to him, closing her eyes against his chest, preparing to go back to sleep. She felt him draw one finger across her shoulder blades and smiled drowsily, turning against him.

"No," she murmured.

She heard him laugh softly and tug her hair. "Wake up," he whispered, drawing his fingers through her hair. "I want to talk to you."

She made a small complaining sound and groaned, rolling over and opening her eyes. "All right," she said grumpily. "I'm awake." Her face unwillingly broke into a smile at his expression, and she slapped him lightly on the arm. "Sadist."

Raoul grinned and kissed her playfully. "Shush. I want to be serious for a moment."

Christine snuggled into his arms and nodded. "Sober as a judge," she promised. "Go on." 

"Well ..." Raoul smoothed her hair back from her face. "You know, one day I'm going to make you cut all this hair off - I woke up at about three this morning to find I was suffocating on it!"

Christine laughed and rubbed her head against his chest. "What did you want to be serious about?"

He smiled. "I've been thinking," he began.

Christine's eyes widened theatrically. "Good Lord!"

He laughed and took a handful of hair into one hand. "Speak again, and I'll pull it," he threatened playfully. Christine raised both hands in mock defence, and they both laughed.

Raoul resumed his speaking attitude. "You've enjoyed England, haven't you?" he began. Christine nodded, tucking a curl behind her ear, slightly confused. "I thought so. And I was wondering ... how would you feel about our buying a house here and settling down somewhere in London?"

"Oh!" Christine sat up, surprised. "Well ... it hadn't really occurred to me." She laughed. "This is a bit sudden, really, but ..." she smiled suddenly. "Yes," she said finally. "I'd like that."

Raoul beamed and kissed her. "I hoped you'd say that."

Christine snuggled back down into Raoul's arms. "Now, am I allowed to go back to sleep?"

He laughed and kissed her hair.

Outside, the sky was grey with ominous clouds that hung low over London, casting a shadow over the city with the threat of impending tragedy.


	4. Chapter IV

A/N - Christine Persephone - Oh yes! Oh yes, Alyx is completely right, the fact that St. Cyr and his family die is kind of the catalyst which sparks off the whole story! Sorry, I should have mentioned that. Oops. This is just kind of an AU where he doesn't. Because I love him.

Oh - and I stole an (ever so slightly amended) line from The Scarlet Pimpernel. Ten points to anyone who can spot it!! (And Maya, if you can't, I'll forbid you to watch Doug for a week!)

And aww ... poor Raoul. He gets such a bad press. Everyone try to be nice to him, please? I feel awful about what I'm going to do to him. Next time, I'll write a happy-Raoul fic, I promise.

*          *          *          *          *          *

Erik saw her only twice after the meeting in the hotel grounds; both times, ironically enough, entirely by accident.

The first time was in Covent Garden, where the flat he had taken was to be found. It was a warm night, unusually so for England in May, and Erik found himself, yet again, unable to sleep or to breathe in the flat which was beginning increasingly to feel like a cage. The flat began to feel uncomfortably close, and Erik's old claustrophobic instincts, legacy of a lifetime's captivity, were returning with a vengeance. Finally unable to bear the close, stifling atmosphere of the cramped little flat any longer, he made his way outside to stand in the moonlight, momentarily startled into the shadows as waves of people began to pour from the Opera House. He stood absolutely still in a small alley just off the main street, willing his heart to slow, and furious at his inability to bear crowds with equanimity.

Just as the crowds of people issuing from the Opera House were reduced to a trickle, and he began to think that he might again be able to make his way home without panic, suddenly, in a spill of moonlight that was momentarily a divine spotlight on her, she was there.

For one wild moment, he was sure he was hallucinating, but then he saw the man to whose arm she clung, and his heart gave one intense thump of recognition and wrenched within him. He had never seen her look lovelier; she was laughing at something the dark-haired man on her other side had said, and her eyes were sparkling, flushed with the excitement of being on the other side of the footlights for once.

He heard Raoul hail a cab, and watched as the dark-haired man handed Christine into its dark interior, laughing at something she had said, a hastily suppressed softness in his eyes that Erik might have recognised had he been able to tear his eyes away from Christine.

The cab drove off, and Erik was left standing alone in the middle of a now-almost deserted street, having unconsciously moved out of the protective cloak of the shadows to be closer to her, if still too far away to touch.

He stood very still for a long time, until his heart stopped hammering, then made his way back to the flat it would be a travesty to call home.

He lay down stiffly on the narrow bed, knowing he would not sleep but unable to think of anything else he could do. He lay absolutely still, wretched and sleepless until dawn, when the sun's rays filtered through the inadequate curtains and the vocal ecstasy of a lark joyfully declaimed the arrival of another endless day.

*          *          *

The second time was about a week later, through long bay windows, warm with light and laughter spilling out into the blackness of the street at night. 

Passing through one of the more exclusive parts of London on his way back to his flat on the reasoning that it was likely to be relatively deserted at this time of night, Erik glanced up at one of the houses, warmly lit and spilling the sounds of life and love out into the street, faintly wistful. 

Nothing could have prepared him for the shock that he received.

She stood alone by the window, staring out into the darkness of the night, an untouched glass of champagne in her hand, wearing an uncomfortably expensive evening dress which somehow looked wrong on her. As he stared at her, his heart suddenly painfully fast, she raised one hand to her temples, briefly closing her eyes, and he almost started forward in concern before he remembered himself and, taking a step backwards, shrouded himself in darkness again.

She had a headache, he realised. There was that familiar crinkle of pain around her eyes, the almost imperceptible tightness in her eyebrows, the brief closing of her eyes when she thought no one was looking. As he watched her, concerned and pained by the thought that she was suffering, he saw Raoul move up behind her and lay his hand on her shoulder. She started like a guilty child and laughed too quickly at his greeting. Her smile forced, too wide, she nodded and touched him on the arm, doubtless telling him that she would join him in a moment. She remained by the window to stare out into the dark a moment longer after he had left her, before she sighed and disappeared back into the party.

Too distressed to safely make his way all the way across London, and unable to bear the thought of being shut up in the poky little flat he had come to hate for yet another endless night, he made his way to the end of the street and concealed himself behind the thickly twisting trunk of a magnolia. 

He sank down onto the ground, lush with the grass, tended so lovingly by a painfully stereotypical English gardener who had an incomprehensible Yorkshire accent and talked to the plants as if they were his personal friends, and drew a shaking breath.

It was no _good_; unimaginably painful as the idea of being too far away from her was, these chance encounters for which he had no chance to steel and prepare himself hurt him more than he could bear, and the thought that she might one day catch sight of him and panic at the thought that he was still stalking her remained an ever-present worry at the back of his mind.

And yet ...

He could not return to France; even had there not been a significant price on his head throughout the country, there were too many memories he was not yet ready to face or strong enough to bear. And the rest of the continent was simply inconvenient; Germany too loud and coarse, Spain unbearably garish, Rome - _oh, God, no_ - and the East uncomfortably difficult to establish oneself in without having to answer a lot of awkward questions.

England was so perfect. The people were so politely reserved, never asking difficult questions he didn't know how to answer, each keeping to their own business; the English stiff upper lip that the rest of Europe so mocked suited him admirably.

He rubbed his hand restlessly up and down the trunk of the magnolia, feeling the burn of bark against his hand as if from a distance. It would all have been so much easier if they had continued their honeymoon tour throughout Europe as they had planned to do, he thought wearily.

There came the staccato clicking sound of feminine high heels on the pavement, accompanied by the slightly duller thud of a pair of men's shoes and the muffled sound of conversation. Erik glanced up sharply, angling himself carefully along the line of the tree to ensure that he was completely invisible.

As the couple continued up the road towards him, their words became more distinct.

"Looked ghastly in the dress, of course, but then what can one expect? One can't pass off a flower girl as a duchess, whatever Bernard Shaw would have us believe, and one can't take a guttersnipe chorus girl from France and expect her to fit into society simply because her husband can afford to buy her a decent wardrobe. No breeding, that's what it is, no posture."

Erik felt the scrape of rough bark along his hand as he clenched it around a branch.

"Just as you say, m'dear."

"You know they're planning to settle down here, don't you? Marjorie Gilmore told me. They're going to start looking at houses. Can you imagine? Our being forced to have that jumped-up little ballet dancer in our house? We'll have to invite them, of course, it wouldn't be the done thing not to." There came a sigh of regret. "And he such a nice young man. Philippe de Chagny's brother, you know, dear, that nice young gentleman we met at the Forsyths' last year." Another sigh. "No, he's charming, it's just that absurd child he's picked up. Whatever possessed him to do it, I can't imagine; and whatever was dear Philippe thinking, permitting it!"

"Quite, m'dear. Oh - taxi!"

Their voices faded as they folded into the black interior of a cab, and Erik was left with blood seeping from his hand from the burn of the branch and his heart aching for her. She should have _known_ how they would receive her! In a society where blood was all-important and money only acceptable if made in "civilised" ways, they would never see her as more than an ill-born French chorus girl who had been involved in scandal at a French Opera House.

He closed his eyes and welcomed the ensuing blackness. That they were to settle down in England was a most unexpected and unwelcome development; that he should remain here was now quite impossible.

Erik rose slowly, and made his way back to Covent Garden.

The next morning, he slipped his notice and two months' advance rent under his landlady's door, and bought a ticket for the first ship he came across, neither knowing nor caring where it was bound for.

It was not until he overheard the conversation of a French mother and her small child that he realised he had boarded a boat that would take him straight back to Paris.

*          *          *

Christine made her way briskly down the corridor, adjusting the vase of flowers in her arms, humming happily to herself. The headache that she had gone to bed with after the nightmarish society party last night had gone, and she felt secure again, reassured by the conversation she and Raoul had had in the warm blackness of their room last night. She paused outside the living room, hearing voices come from within. She soon identified the speakers as Raoul and St. Cyr, and the serious note in their voices stopped her from breezing in and disrupting them. 

"St. Cyr ..." Raoul sounded hopeless. "You can't leave."

"I have to, Raoul. It ..." he drew a deep breath and pressed his knuckles to his face. "It wouldn't work."

"She need never know," Raoul pleaded.

Christine heard St. Cyr cross the room and toss back a tumbler of brandy, before he turned back to face her husband. "But I know. And now you do - I can't stay under those conditions." He paused. "Perhaps if I go away for a time, I can forget about her - perhaps even find a wife for myself while I'm away. But if I stay here - can't you see? - I might end up betraying your trust. I couldn't bear that - I respect you too much for that. I respect her too much for that."

There was a long silence, before Christine heard Raoul sigh. She could almost picture him distractedly drawing a hand back through his hair as he looked at his stubborn friend.

"You know that I bear you no ill-will for what you have told me here today," he said quietly, crossing the room to shake St. Cyr's hand. "And I swear she will never learn of it from me."

St. Cyr nodded seriously. "I will write," he said after another silence. "When I am again a little more my own man."

The two men shook hands and St. Cyr made for the door. Panicking at the thought that she might be caught eavesdropping, Christine forced herself to push the door open and breeze into the room with a smile and a cheery greeting.

Both men froze at the sight of her, Raoul suddenly motionless in the act of pouring himself a glass of brandy before forcing himself to smile and reach out to her. St. Cyr stared at her for a moment in confusion, then bowed stiffly and hastened out of the room.

Christine looked after him in confusion, placing the vase on the table as she looked up at Raoul.

"What's wrong with him?" she asked, bewildered. "Is he all right?"

Raoul smiled cautiously, taking her into his arms and kissing her on the top of her head. "He's just ..." he hesitated, "... had a little bad news. He's going away for a while."

Christine turned in his arms to look him in the face, one eyebrow raised. "Raoul, has anyone ever told you that you are a truly appalling liar?"

He laughed uncomfortably and traced the line of her hair with his hand. "Christine ... believe me when I say I should love nothing better than to tell you the real reason for his departure ... and trust me when I say I cannot."

Her brow furrowed in concern. "Is he all right?"

Raoul took her into his arms again, pressing her head against his chest and stroking her hair back. "Not really," he answered honestly. "But he will be, given time."

Christine frowned. "Raoul ... you would tell me if there was anything seriously wrong, wouldn't you?"

He kissed the top of her head. "Of course I would," he whispered. "Please believe I have a good reason for not telling you the whole."

She nodded slowly, tracing her finger along the petals of a drooping red rose in the vase. "Of course I do," she murmured. "Of course."

*          *          *

Christine was surprised to find how much she missed St. Cyr. Raoul continued to be busy with his estate back in France, and with only English society beauties to occupy her time, all of whom seemed to mean more than they said, she found herself unbearably lonely.

Christine found herself longing for Paris and her friends, who did not judge her only as the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny.

And one friend in particular ...

She sighed and picked up her needlework again, staring down at the slightly crooked rose she had spent an hour stitching yesterday while she waited for Raoul to get home. She stabbed her needle too hard through the thin silk and sucked in her breath as it drove into her finger, drawing blood. She threw the needlework frame down onto her footstool and stood up to pace the room distractedly, sucking her finger where the needle had broken the skin.

She heard a hesitant tap on the door and groaned inwardly. _I can't bear another mindless conversation with a drivelling sixteen-year-old who wants to practise her French,_ she thought with a kind of weary desperation.

"Come in!" she called, arranging her face into what she hoped passed for a smile.

St. Cyr opened the door a little way and looked in.

"St. Cyr!" She jumped up and hastened to greet him. "How wonderful to see you! I didn't know you were back in England!"

St. Cyr forced a smile and bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek.

"Christine ..." He gestured to a chair, and Christine sat down, slightly confused at his unaccustomed formality.

"What's wrong?" she asked, feeling the first icy pinpricks of fear. "What's happened? Are you all right?" She reached down to grasp his hand, and his silence confirmed her anxiety. "St. Cyr, tell me what it is!"

He took both of her hands in his own and held them very tightly, not meeting her eyes. 

"Christine ... my dear ..." He drew a deep breath. "Christ alive, I'm no good at this."

Christine felt tears start in her eyes and blinked them back. "Is it Raoul?" she whispered.

St. Cyr looked up at her, his hands crushingly tight around her own, and nodded once, his own eyes unusually bright. "I'm so sorry."

Christine felt tears slip down her cheeks. "No," she whispered, turning her face away and trying uselessly to withdraw her hands from St. Cyr's. "No ..."

His hand was on her face, forcing her to look at him. "He didn't suffer. It was over in an instant."

"No." She was sobbing now, denial burning through her, reaching out as though she expected Raoul to walk through the door. "No!"

And then St. Cyr's arms were around her, tight, rescuing, something warm and real in a world that was so suddenly upside down, and she clung to him as a rock in the unbearably cold sea that was so inexorably, in a blinding rush of icy water, rushing her away into the blackness of subterranea.


	5. Chapter V

A/N - I can't apologise enough for the ridiculous time lag in my getting this chapter written. I can only plead writer's block and hope that you aren't all too miffed. It's a nice long chapter to make up :) The reason it's so late is that I've been trying to write Christine's reaction and the reaction of those around her (largely Philippe and St Cyr) and it just didn't work.

Ooh - and since writing the last chapter, I've read The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, and have discovered that St. Cyr was really not a very nice guy; so I've figured out my St. Cyr's ancestry as follows:

Armand rescued the daughter of St. Cyr (the one with whom he was in love) and they got married. My St. Cyr is descended from their line (and is as such related by marriage to Percy and by blood to Marguerite! Yay!) I do realise that names are only passed on through the male side of the family; but this was the best I could come up with!

Oh yes, and Erik's cat's name ... sorry. Not terribly original. I'm just on a bit of a Pimpernel kick at the moment!

Will be impressed if anyone spots the significance of Matthew Carl's name!!

T'eyla Minh - wondered if anyone would spot that ;)

Hugs and lots of love to all my reviewers!!

*          *          *          *          *          *

Erik had been back in Paris for several days before he plucked up the courage to go to visit Nadir. He knew his friend had probably been frantic with worry in the weeks after his sudden departure from Paris, and that his own curt note from the docks bidding him adieu had probably done little to allay Nadir's anxiety. He knew Nadir would welcome a visit.

When they finally had met, it had been just as Erik had anticipated; slightly awkward at first, Nadir still suffering from his infernal conscience and anxiety over whether his actions the last night they had met had been beyond reproach, and Erik reticent as ever; but after a few glasses of brandy, they had gradually become easy together again, and when Nadir produced the chessboard, and Erik proceeded to win and consequently refuse to accept several large sums of money from his friend, it was as if nothing had changed at all.

However, Nadir had noticed the change in his friend; despite Erik's customary nonchalance, he knew how he was missing Christine. But Nadir found himself unable to alleviate his suffering; even had Erik been less determined to rebuff every attempt of Nadir's to bring up the subject of Christine or the Opera, he still would not have known what to say. Erik had of course not told Nadir about his meetings with Christine in England; she was a demon which he alone could exorcise, and her presence an exquisite torture which he could not bear to share.

*          *          *

It was a warm day in mid-July, and Erik and Nadir were seated in Nadir's flat, frowning over the chess board. Nadir had seemed unusually edgy all morning, and had lost every game to Erik. This in itself was hardly unusual; but he seemed so unusually tense that Erik, always hyper-sensitive to unease in others, was growing uncomfortable himself.

When there came a knock at a neighbour's door, and Nadir started so badly that he knocked Erik's glass of brandy over, Erik finally threw down his bishop, exasperated. 

"Nadir, I do wish you would tell me, if you want me to go that badly," he said with irritation. "You're worse than one of Madame Giry's ballet rats."

He rose to leave, taking his cloak from the hands of Darius, silent as ever in his presence, and tipped his hat with slightly ironic courtesy to his oldest friend.

"Erik."

Erik turned back to see that Nadir had too risen from his seat, and was unconsciously grasping at thin air as he always did when agitated.

"Please," he began in a strained voice, gesturing to the chair Erik had just vacated. "Sit down."

The blank white mask hiding his bemusement, Erik sat down slowly, draping his cloak over the back of an armchair, ignoring Darius' silent passage behind him to pick it up and tidy it away with the obsessive neatness of one who cannot bear disorder.

Nadir sat too, but almost immediately rose again and began to pace the room, turning occasionally to bestow an agitated glance upon Erik, who remained silent, knowing that his friend was more likely to offer whatever information so distressed him without external pressure.

"How can I know if I am right in this?" he asked finally, turning to look his friend full in the face for the first time all afternoon.

"There is presumably only one way to establish that," Erik said slowly, icy fingers of cold fear beginning to tingle up his spine.

Nadir looked at him for another long moment, then nodded, and, as if drawing on some resolve, bent to the small wicker open-topped basket which served as home to his papers. He withdrew a newspaper and opened it to an article several pages in, drawing another deep breath and offering it to Erik. Erik took it abruptly, not allowing their fingers to touch, and turned away from Nadir to read it.

When he turned back, the visible part of his face had gone white.

"What is this?" he asked, his voice trembling despite his efforts to stop it. "Is this ... a rumour, a joke ...?"

Nadir shook his head silently, watching his friend closely. Uncomfortable under his scrutiny, and barely able to think straight, Erik turned away from him again and sank into an armchair, reading over the article again.

The page was headed with a large black and white photograph of Christine and Raoul beaming into the camera on their wedding day. Below the picture, the article read:

_London and Paris are fellow cities in mourning today, for it has just been announced that French nobleman and recent sensation in London society Raoul de Chagny was last night involved in an accident which cost him and a manservant their lives._

_The Vicomte de Chagny was recently married and living in __London__ with his new bride, former opera diva Christine Daaé. There had been significant opposition to the match in the shape of Philippe, the Comte de Chagny and Raoul's brother and only living relative, but those close to the couple say that Philippe had in the end decided to stand by whatever decision his brother might make, however impractical._

_It is reported that de Chagny was on his way back from a late-night business meeting with an acquaintance when his carriage was run off the road by a hired cab whose driver was somewhat the worse for alcohol. The driver of this cab, who has not yet been named, is being held by the police and will appear in court tomorrow morning._

_de__ Chagny's widow was not available for comment; close family friend the Marquis de St Cyr issued a statement on her behalf, saying, "We are all deeply upset at this tragedy. The family have asked me to thank you for the kind wishes they have received but beg that they be left in privacy to recover from this nightmare as they see best fit." Upon enquiries after the former diva's health, he replied, "She is in perfect health but clearly devastated by this blow. She and Raoul were very much in love and this has of course been very hard on her. She has not yet made a decision on whether she will remain in __England__ or return to her native __France__." Questions about the will and de Chagny's financial state were ignored, as were those about his relationship with his brother._

There followed several paragraphs of speculation about the de Chagny fortune and the disposal thereof, ending with a deeply insincere note of well-wishing to "all those this tragedy has left bereaved".

Erik lowered the paper to his lap, unable to think, his mind in turmoil. He realised that Nadir was still watching him anxiously and rose, making a show of checking his pocket-watch.

"I hadn't realised it was quite so late," he said with unconvincing composure. "I really must be getting along."

"Sit down, Erik," Nadir said anxiously, "have a drink; you can't go out alone like this."

"Don't be absurd, daroga," Erik said coolly. "Much though the death of yet another aristocratic teenager clearly distresses me, I do believe I am still capable of walking the streets of Paris without an escort."

Nadir remained silent. 

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked finally, knowing from long and bitter experience that attempts to prise that from Erik which he did not wish to discuss were utterly pointless.

"Of course I'm all right," he said expressionlessly. "Really, daroga, I do wish you wouldn't fuss so. When have I ever given you cause to worry?"

It said a lot for the depth of Erik's distress, Nadir thought, that Erik said this without the faintest hint of irony.

*          *          *

Erik strode blindly down the Rue de Rivoli, feeling the pain of guilt and vicarious grief sear through him. No matter how hard he tried to suppress it, he could still feel that tight little knot of elation screaming to be heard, deep in his heart; much though his heart ached at the thought of Christine's pain, he could not deny that he had hated Raoul more than anyone he had ever known. 

And much though he loathed himself for feeling so at such a time for Christine, a tiny part of him could only think that she was free again.

Unfettered by the bonds of her church's marriage ...

_No_!

He locked the door of his flat behind himself and sat down on the hard wooden floor he had not yet bothered to have carpeted.

The fact that the man she had loved was dead did not lessen the fact that she had hated him in the slightest, he told himself fiercely. He could still hear her voice in his head, edged with tears, cold with terrified anger, seeking to hurt; at times, it seemed he would never be able to quiet it.

The madness of hope was one he could not allow himself if he wanted to retain any claim whatsoever to his sanity.

He buried his face in his hands, feeling the scar tissue rough under his fingers where it emerged from under the mask into his hair.

On a sudden whim, he moved with fierce vigour into the bedroom, where he withdrew the one mirror he possessed from its locked drawer with suddenly clumsy fingers.

He stared into it for a long moment, then, painfully slowly, with fingers that he could not keep from shaking, he unfastened the mask and drew it slowly away from his face.

The first sight of his face almost undid him, and he felt the pain tear through him, lacerating what was left of his heart with the despair of hopelessness.

Erik bit his lip until the blood flowed, his hands clenched into bloodless fists as he raised the mirror to the ruin of his face again, relentless punishment for the weakness of his heart.

He repeated the process mercilessly upon himself until he was shaking from the onslaught and hopeless, clenching his fists into such painfully tight knots that his nails dug into the skin of his palms, his shoulders locked with tension.

His hands were bleeding and his heart raw before the mirror finally slipped from his hands to shatter on the floor, and when he looked down to see himself reflected a hundred times in a hundred tiny shards of cruelty, his last reserves of strength deserted him.

He had begun to dream of her again only nights after his return to France. As he slept, she came to him again, and on the first night he awoke from her arms to find himself quite alone in the cold darkness of his bed, the sheer despair of his loneliness had almost undone him. 

At first, the unendurable sweetness of his sleep only exacerbated the anguish that returned as soon as he awoke; but, ever used to accepting what was never enough, those fleeting moments of sleeping happiness had recently been enough to sustain him throughout the endless lonely days.

But after that night, when he once again made himself fully aware that there never had been, and never would be, any shred of hope, the small comfort of his dreams of her once again became nightmares, horrific in their intensity, and he once again became accustomed to wake in tears, unable to keep himself from shaking.

His heart, lacerated and broken beyond repair, could no longer allow him even a few unconscious moments' happiness with her memory.

*          *          *

Carmen chewed nervously on her fingernail, twisting a thick dark curl between her fingers. She was started from her reverie by the de Chagnys' English butler Hudson, who looked round the door and nodded.

"All right, Carmen, they're ready for you now."

She stood up hastily, and stumbled. Hudson caught hold of her arm and held her for a moment.

"Steady, Carmen."

She drew a deep, shaking breath, and nodded, patting her hair down.

"Will I do?"

Hudson looked her up and down. "Perfect." He smiled suddenly. "Deep breaths now."

She flashed a nervous smile and followed Hudson cautiously into the room.

"Carmen is here, my lord."

She was greeted by the face of the Marquis de St. Cyr, a man she recognised as an old friend of the master's,_ God rest him_, his face worn and weary, but forcing a smile to ease her nervousness.

"Carmen, come in, sit down."

She entered the room cautiously and sat down very tentatively on the very edge of the settee St. Cyr indicated, twisting her apron in her fingers.

St. Cyr noticed her nervousness and tried to set her at her ease, offering her a glass of wine. The horror in her face at this unprecedented display of equality was almost comical as she shook her head fervently, still staring down at her hands tightly folded in her lap. 

Philippe was more direct.  "How is she?"

Carmen looked up in alarm at his brusque tone, and was shocked and horrified at what she saw. Far from the handsome young man he had always appeared to her before, supremely confident in himself and those around him, Philippe looked exhausted beyond belief, his face that of a man suddenly grown old; the loss of such a beloved younger brother had hit him hard. As she watched, struck dumb with horror, Philippe walked stiffly around the table and poured himself a large glass of whisky. He offered the decanter to St. Cyr, who shook his head silently, worry filling his eyes as he watched Philippe swallow the contents of the glass with alarming speed.

Philippe looked up at Carmen, and spoke again, a touch of irritation in the words this time. "I asked you a question. How is my sister-in-law?"

Displaying such raw and purely human grief, Philippe suddenly ceased to be frightening to the tiny Spanish maid, who felt pity flood her heart at his great loss.

"I am afraid for her, sir," she whispered. "She has not eaten since ... since we heard the news, and Sophie in the kitchen does put in such a lot of effort, and she is really quite ..."

Philippe turned away with a gesture of impatience and took another swallow of whisky, and St. Cyr, seeing Philippe's impatience, hastily interceded.

"Thank you, Carmen," he said quickly. "Has she left her bed yet?"

Slightly subdued, the little maid continued, "She stands up, and she walks about the room, and she looks out the window, and then she cries, and she goes back to bed. I am afraid for her, Monsieur," she whispered, wiping away a tear with her apron.

St. Cyr leant forward wordlessly and handed her his handkerchief, giving her a moment or two to compose herself before he spoke. 

"Thank you very much, Carmen," he said gently. "We know you're doing everything within your power to help restore Madame Christine to health, and we're very grateful."

He glanced to Philippe to see if he had any further questions for his sister-in-law's maid, but Philippe had sunk into an armchair and was staring emptily into the fire.

He dismissed Carmen gently, with assurances that they would indeed take very good 

care of Madame Christine, and quietly came and took a seat by the fire next to Philippe.

Philippe sat up with some difficulty, and reached out towards the whisky decanter. "Drink?" he asked St. Cyr, his speech slightly slurred. St. Cyr shook his head, and gently took the decanter from his friend. 

"Enough for you, Philippe," he said with gentle firmness. "You won't be able to get up in the morning if you take any more."

For a moment, it looked as if Philippe might argue, then he slumped back into the chair.

"I daresay you're right," he conceded wearily, pulling a hand backwards through his already rumpled hair. "So! My brother's little princess? What are we going to do with her?"

St. Cyr laughed shortly and sat down heavily in an armchair. "God knows."

"Well, you're her friend, aren't you?" Philippe asked, slightly irritably. "What's best for her?"

St. Cyr remained silent, deep in contemplation.

"Back to France, do you think?"

St. Cyr looked up and nodded. "Oh yes, no question. She's not been happy here ... I think she's been finding it harder than she anticipated to appear in Society." There was a brief pause before he continued, "I think that the Lady Claire has not made it easy for her ..."

Philippe nodded with wry understanding; Lady Claire Francis, wife of an important Conservative Member of Parliament, a woman with whom he was intimate for business reasons but disliked intensely, had taken it extremely badly that _that darling de Chagny boy_ should have taken it into his head to form an infatuation with a common chorus girl. He could well imagine how Lady Claire - influential in Society and sometimes cruelly sharp with thinly-veiled spite towards anyone she disliked - had made his sister-in-law's life difficult, and suddenly felt ashamed that he had not tried to help Christine more.

Philippe suddenly became aware that St Cyr was watching him with carefully veiled sympathy, and cleared his throat.

"So," he said. "What do you think?"

St Cyr sat back and steepled his fingers in his lap.

"I have been thinking that ... perhaps ... it might not be a bad idea to get her back into some form of routine ... some form of employment."

Philippe looked up, alarmed. "You aren't serious."

St. Cyr shrugged. "You heard what Carmen said. I think we've left her alone too long."

Philippe sat back in his chair, shaking his head. "No," he said resolutely, running a hand distractedly through his hair. "It's impossible, I won't allow it. So soon after ..." He stopped abruptly and silence filled the room. He shook his head again, and brought his fist down onto the table.  "No," he said, with more conviction than he felt. 

St Cyr rose, seeing that there was nothing to be gained arguing when Philippe was still so heartsore.

"We'll see," he said gently. "In the meantime ..." - he brought his hands down lightly onto the back of Philippe's chair - "I think I might go and have a word with Christine."

Philippe nodded assent, staring sightlessly into the dancing flames in the fireplace.

St Cyr waited a moment longer, before silently leaving the room and sending Philippe's manservant Matthew to him, a trusted friend who had been in the family for many years, and whose eyes were also red with grief. 

*          *          *

Philippe never knew what St Cyr said to Christine that night, but whatever it was made a deep impression upon her. Carmen no longer went around with red eyes, and Sophie-in-the-kitchen was satisfied that her food was no longer going to waste.

Christine appeared around the house, looking pale and drawn, but reasonably calm, and, under the watchful, gentle guidance of St Cyr, slowly began to recover herself and interact with those few close friends she could bear to receive.

The Girys came during this period, Meg anxious and grief-stricken, her mother silent but understanding. It was clear that the proximity of Christine's dearest friend was a great comfort to her, and between themselves, St Cyr and Antoinette Giry decided that it would be a good idea for Meg to stay with Christine until her affairs were sufficiently in order for her to return to France, a task which St Cyr was working around the clock to accomplish as soon as possible. 

It was only many years later that Christine realised just how much of her happiness she owed to St Cyr. He was steady, endlessly patient, forever comforting, and above all, simply reassuring to have around. She did not realise until many years later just how much time and effort he had expended on ensuring her comfort during the immediate period after Raoul's death; at the time, she was too heartsick and miserable to realise that her passage back to France and subsequent accommodation was managed with the greatest of ease and with no inconvenience to herself; it did not occur to her that Philippe was always kinder to her than she had any right to expect. She did not know the amount of paperwork St Cyr completed in her name to spare her the pain of dealing with the bureaucracy of a widow, and she did not notice the miracle of the newspapers leaving her in peace to restore her life without interruptions.

Meg, however, a constant companion to Christine, did notice.

And she did not forget.

*          *          *

Four interminably long years ensued. 

Four years in which Erik thought of her, dreamed of her, composed for her, and kept up with her progress through the tabloids. It had taken quite some resolve to stop himself from saving every article on her, to prevent himself from creating a shrine to her in her absence. Gradually, ever so gradually, he began to build his life up again. 

But she was always there at the periphery of his vision, an everlasting spectator to whatever he might do.

Four years in which, slowly, he began to rebuild his life, and the number of days Nadir would find him staring morosely into the fire gradually decreased. The acquisition of a stray kitten he had found wandering the streets of Paris had done what Nadir found he could not - reawakened some emotion in him under the stifling apathy. She was without a doubt the most well-loved cat in Paris, and as she grew fat and sleek, she became more and more like a dog every day, jealously possessive of her master's love, sleeping on his bed at night, and becoming frantic if he was absent for what she considered to be an unreasonable length of time.

He named her Marguerite after that fieriest of French revolutionaries, and in her, he found the outlet for his love he had been seeking all his life: one who loved him just as he loved her.

But she whom he had loved was never far from mind; and, although neither of them knew it, never far from his door.

*          *          *

Four years in which Christine's pain faded to a dull ache. St. Cyr was her rock during this time, always kind and gentle, neither caring if she cried, screamed, or broke things, always there to soothe and offer an immediate comfort. Slowly, ever so slowly, she began to live again, and it was one day in early July that she and Meg took a seemingly innocuous walk that would prove the altering of both their lives in ways they had not even imagined. 

They were wandering down the Rue de Metz, Meg chattering animatedly about one of the dancers Christine had never met doing something she could not quite imagine in one of the prop rooms with a stage hand who had recently been fired for painting a tree blue.

Meg was so engrossed in her story that she was paying even less attention to where she was walking than usual, and several times had Christine had to pull her out of the way of oncoming traffic or other of the busy shoppers who herded through the street daily.

But as Christine's eyes wandered away from her garrulous little friend, she heard Meg yelp and begin rapidly apologising. There followed a sharp intake of breath, and all of a sudden she felt Meg clutch at her sleeve in panic.

Two voices spoke her name together; one the terrified squeak of her dearest friend, the other the barely audible breath of disbelief of a voice she had never thought to hear again.__

She looked up in blind incomprehension, but the barest flash of white under a hastily lowered fedora was enough to confirm the instinctive reaction of her heart.

For one interminably long moment, all three stood absolutely still, staring blindly at each other, none of them able to react.

Then Christine heard Meg make a sound halfway between a squeak and a sigh, and felt her crumple to the ground in a dead faint. She knelt immediately beside her, and in the half-second she took her eyes away from Erik, he vanished.


	6. Chapter VI

A/N – It's been far too many months since I updated this phic (does anyone even remember it?!) This is partly because of my perpetual complaint of writer's block, and partly because this story has undergone a bit of a revision, including a change of title. This is because, listening to Linda Eder's beautiful version of _Only Love_ from _The Scarlet Pimpernel_), I realised that it really epitomises everything I want this story to be. The song itself is used later in this chapter, and will be again in later chapters. (The lyrics are now in my profile, if anyone's interested enough to want to read them.)

I'm still not happy with bits of this chapter, and if anyone has any ideas of how to make it better, I would be grateful to hear them; the entire story is under revision at the moment and all advice is gratefully received!

Likewise with the formatting – anyone know how I can get my multiple spacing back?!

Having actually thought about it, I've realised that while Marguerite is a suitable name for Erik's cat, he would actually be more likely to have named her after _Faust_ than Pimpernel.

Gratitude to everyone who likes St Cyr (I promise, Riene, he's not predatory!), and hugs and cookies each to Maya and Stemwinder for recognising Matthew, and to Lavendar for predicting exactly how Erik will behave in this chapter ;)

As always, much love and thanks to all my reviewers!

As Erik followed Christine back through the streets of Paris bearing Meg in his arms, wretched with misery and confusion, he wondered with no little irritation whether there was something in the water that ballet girls drank to cause them to wreak as much havoc as they inevitably did, or whether it just came naturally.

Christine did not look back at him as she hurried anxiously back towards her house, trusting him to follow, and he wondered unhappily whether this unthinkable meeting had affected her as it had him.

_Of course not._ She had always affected him more deeply than she had ever imagined, whilst any small regard she might once have entertained for him had been based solely around her voice and a desire that he should continue her lessons rather than any genuine affection.

He saw her sweep back a lock of hair from her face with an anxiously distracted motion of her hand and felt his heart constrict, betraying exactly that which he had been fighting to quell since his first glimpse of her, furious at the shameful weakness he had worked so hard to suppress these last four years.

They had reached a large, secluded house off the main street, and Christine stopped and turned anxiously back to Erik.

"I'll just … go and have a word with the servants, ask them to make themselves scarce," she said, all in a rush.

She ran up the steps, looking like a child again, and disappeared into the house.

Erik set Meg gently down on a carved stone bench in front of the arbour that graced the front of the house and turned to go, unable to bear the thought of being in the same room as her again.

Close enough to touch …

He was halfway down the drive before her voice called him back.

"Erik?"

Against his better judgment, he turned back to look at her; realising only too late what a mistake it was, and what a fool he had been to ever have thought he could forget her.

She had come down the steps towards him, and the expression on her face, a mixture of confusion and distress, hurt him unbearably.

"Don't go," she said softly. 

He was silent for a long time.

"Please," she said.

Her voice melted his irresolution, as it always had. He nodded once.

Erik laid Meg carefully on a chaise longue and moved away as Christine knelt beside her, passing a hand across her forehead and brushing a lock of silky blonde hair out of her face.

"I thought I had some smelling salts around here somewhere," she murmured. She looked up at Erik, her blue eyes earnest but still a little anxious. "Would you check in the dresser for me, please?"

Erik swallowed hard over a sudden lump in his throat, and crossed to the dresser.

Her voice reached him as if from a distance. "The third drawer to the left, I think."

He opened the drawer, and indeed, among a scatter of papers and various oddments, there lay a bottle of smelling salts, tipped on its side. He picked it up, feeling the shock of cold glass against his hands, and returned to the sofa. 

Christine ran her hand lightly over her little friend's hair, and took the bottle from Erik with a murmured word of thanks, seeming not to notice his momentary confusion at the touch of her hand. Gently she uncapped the smelling salts, and held the little cut glass bottle to Meg's face.

For a moment, there was silence, then Meg's eyes flew open and she sat up hurriedly, coughing as she pushed the smelling salts away.

"What ha-"

Then her eyes lighted on Erik's face.

Daniel Reeves, the English butler St Cyr had employed for Christine, stopped short in the hall at the sound of a woman's scream, sharp and raw with terror. He hastily handed the tray he had been carrying to the parlourmaid Daisy, who looked at it with complete blankness before wandering vaguely away in the rough direction of the kitchen. Daniel reflected irritably that the tray was as likely to end up on the front lawn as it was in the kitchen as he hurried to the drawing room to see what the matter was. 

As he neared the drawing room, he could hear a confusion of noise from within; a woman - Mademoiselle Meg, of course, no one else could make so much noise at such a high pitch - was still screaming, the sound muffled by the mistress' attempts to calm her down. 

Somewhere in the confusion he heard a man speak - "I think it would be better if I left" - and the mistress' frantic reply.  

"_No_! Meg ... Meg, _do_ be quiet, for heaven's sake!"

Daniel recalled with wry amusement the horrendous noise that Meg had made a month or two ago at the sight of a mouse skittering from behind the sofa. He tapped lightly at the door and pushed it open gently.

"Madam ..."

Christine looked up from the sofa, anger lighting her eyes.

"Reeves, I _asked_ you to leave us alone!"

Daniel looked around the room in confusion; Christine rarely, if ever, spoke sharply to her servants, and was customarily gently patient with even the half-witted parlourmaid Daisy.

"Forgive me, madam ... I assumed ..."

"_Don't_ assume, Reeves!" Christine snapped, looking close to tears as she pressed Meg's face to her shoulder and frantically stroked her hair in a vain effort to calm her. Meg's screams had dissolved into gulping sobs, and she now clung desperately to Christine like a frightened child, hiccupping every now and again into her friend's shoulder.

Daniel drew himself up to his full height, confused and offended by Christine's inexplicable sharpness.

"If you will forgive me, madam, I was coming to tell you that the Marquis de St Cyr is here, and requests an audience with you." He paused, before adding coldly, "Am I to inform the Marquis that you are not receiving?"

Christine covered her face with her hands in a gesture of anguished agitation. "Yes ... no ..." She shook her head fiercely, as if to take control of herself. "No, that's right, tell him that I am not receiving and that I will ... see him tomorrow."

Daniel nodded stiffly and withdrew, closing the door behind him a little more firmly than was perhaps necessary.

Christine flinched and raised one hand to her temples to brush away the dawning headache. Meg lay still in her arms now, her sobs having subsided into silence, and Christine wondered briefly if she had fallen asleep. She looked up and met Erik's eyes, dark and unfathomable but quiet, understanding.

"I think I had better go," he said softly, graceful hands taking up his cloak and hat. 

"No!" Christine sat up, alarmed. "Please don't go."

"Far be it from me to keep you from your friends, my dear," he said coldly. "I am sure the gentleman is very anxious to see you, and it will not do to keep him waiting."

"Oh ..." Christine made a dismissive gesture in the air with one hand. "It doesn't matter. I'll see him tomorrow, or some other time ... Erik, please."

Erik felt a tremor run through him at the sound of his name on her lips, and halted in his progress towards the door. He looked back at her, irresolute and hating himself.

_No, no …_

"Please."

He hesitated a moment longer. Finally he nodded stiffly and stepped back into the room, turning to close the door and using the moment it afforded him to collect himself again and assume some semblance of calm to allow him to face her.

"Do sit down," she said at last. "I can't bear to have you towering over me like that."

Erik raised one eyebrow, unseen, behind the mask. She had, however unconsciously, employed the only tactic by which she could have induced him to take a seat. Did she really still know him so well?

He moved to the deep armchair she indicated and sat slowly, folding his hands in his lap in an effort to hide the fact that he could not keep them from shaking. He kept a watchful eye on Meg, silently praying that she would not panic again.

Erik had barely taken his seat when there came a knock at the door, and he sprang up again, a reflexive movement that betrayed his tension.

A rather gawky girl of about eighteen entered the room, her dark hair pulled back rather untidily beneath a slightly grubby cap. Christine sighed, seeing that Erik had retreated to stand with his back to the girl by the fireplace.

"Yes, Daisy?" she asked. 

"Please, ma'am, Mr Reeves sent me."

There was a brief pause.

"Yes, Daisy. Why did he send you?"

"Please, ma'am, he said that he thought Mademoiselle Giry might like to lie down for a while."

Christine offered a silent prayer of thanks for Reeves' common sense. 

"Very good, Daisy." She murmured something in Meg's ear that even Erik's preternatural hearing could not quite catch, and helped her friend up. Meg went out of the room as if in a daze, followed by Daisy, who did not look much more awake herself.

The door closed behind them, and for a long time, the silence in the morning-room was broken only by the sound of a bird chirping outside the window.

At last, Erik turned from the fireplace to face Christine.

"I see Mademoiselle Giry's vocal cords have not been weakened by time," he said wryly. "I always felt she might make rather a remarkable singer, if anyone could have the patience to train her."

Christine gestured to an armchair and was relieved when he sat without protest. She had forgotten how difficult he could be when he felt ill at ease, and, keen though she was that it should continue, even she had to admit that this unthinkable encounter was uncomfortable beyond her experience.

It was in this awkward moment that Christine looked away, embarrassed, and her eyes lighted on his hands, always compelling, folded tightly in his lap. It was with a shocked flash of memory that she realised he wore a plain golden ring on the little finger of his left hand. Her eyes flew immediately back up to his in confusion, and she saw him stiffen, his right hand closing over the fingers of his left. She looked hastily away, feeling her cheeks burn scarlet with embarrassment, and when she had recovered herself sufficiently to look back at him, the ring had disappeared. 

Had it not been for his suddenly tense posture and the discomfiture in his eyes, she might have thought she had imagined it altogether.

Embarrassed now beyond calm, Christine looked around for something to distract Erik's attention until she could stop her cheeks from flaming. She glanced up, nervous and uncomfortable, to see Erik looking at the grand piano tucked away at the far end of the room, and knew a moment of relief.

"Will you play for me?" she asked shyly, gesturing at the piano.

Erik looked up sharply, evidently startled. "I'm sorry?"

Christine rose and drew the dust cover away from the piano, passing a hand over the polished wood. "Will you play for me?" she repeated. "It doesn't get nearly enough use: I'm the only one to play it and, well –" she laughed "- you remember I was never much of a pianist."

Erik rose slowly and drew a hand lightly along the piano, a caressing motion that made Christine shiver somewhere deep inside with the embrace of memory. Finally, he nodded shortly in acquiescence and sat down at the bench, lifting the lid and passing his fingers soundlessly over the keys for a moment.

"What would you like me to play?" he asked without looking up at her.

"Anything," she said softly, feeling her face flush again as he glanced up at her with one eyebrow raised.

Seeing her embarrassment, Erik looked away to shuffle through the sheet music lying on top of the piano. He smiled as he glanced through them; they were indeed all Christine's: vocal scores all, happy, easy music for a mediocre pianist and – he thought wryly, noting the minimal range required to sing the majority of the pieces – a woman with far too little confidence in her own ability.

He selected one at random, setting it on the ornately carved music stand before him and beginning to play.

As the song went on, he felt Christine kneel on the floor beside him and lean her cheek on her hand. He stole a single glance at her, and felt his heart wrench; she was utterly lovely: her eyes closed, her hair spilling over her arm, her lips curved into a slight smile that tore at his heart and made him ache to take her in his arms.

And suddenly, it was no longer enough to play while she listened; suddenly, he found himself unable to repress the madness that rose up in him, born of the memory of another time, in another room, with a piano much like this …

"Will you sing for me?" he asked, keeping his eyes fixed steadily on the sheet music he had long since stopped reading as he began to improvise, wordless melody expressing what he dared not say.

Christine opened her eyes and sat up, and he felt her eyes on him even as he dared not look at her. She laughed a little, embarrassed. "I can't."

He looked down at her, and the music stopped. "Tell me why you think that." He looked away again, and his fingers began to move lightly over the keys again, a sweetly soft melody rising from the piano like smoke.

She made a nervous, agitated little gesture with her hands. "I haven't sung for years, not properly." She sighed and passed a hand absently through her hair, unaware of his eyes, tender on her. "I have no voice anymore."

The music changed subtly, becoming simpler, gentler, soothing. "You used to say that when you first came to me," he said. " 'I have no voice'." He glanced up at her. "You were wrong then, too."

Her eyes moved sharply up to meet his, and for one brief eternal moment, their eyes met, and the heart of each reeled with remembrance of old emotion. She took a step back in involuntary confusion, and Erik looked away, breaking the unfathomable contact of their eyes.

Erik drew one silent, shaking breath, willing his heart to slow as he fought to keep the music pouring from his fingers steady. He was suddenly very aware of how impossibly foolish he had been to follow her home, to sit in her house with her, to allow her to wind herself around his heart again: to lose her once had broken his heart; but now, now that he had, by some deity – malevolent or forgiving he had yet to find out - been granted what amounted to a second chance, a few more precious moments with her, to lose her again on the wings of fear and loathing would destroy him.

Wordlessly, he offered her a sheet of music selected at random from the pile on top of the piano, shuffling the piano accompaniment to the music stand in front of him.

He felt her draw a deep breath, then nod, and he began the accompaniment, his heart tightening in anticipation.

_"I see you try to turn away._

_I hear the words you want to say._

_I feel how much you need to hide_

_What's happening inside you tonight."_

Erik found himself suddenly unable to breathe over the sudden hammering of his heart, his fingers blindly seeking the keys. She was right, of course, her voice was not as strong as it could or should be, and the timidity that prevented her from opening her throat and giving the song the full power of which she was more than capable was deeply reminiscent of the first time Erik had ever heard her sing, shy and irresolute on the deserted stage of the Paris Opera.

Oh, but even so …

Her voice was still that of an angel, if an ever so slightly rusted and tarnished one, and the old emotion that he had always fought so hard to suppress rose up in him again like smoke, absorbing through him once again into his very core.

"_Come meet my eyes one moment more;_

_Our eyes are different than before._

_This night, so beautiful and strange,_

_This night begins to change who we are._

_Don't turn away, it's only _–"__

Erik and Christine started jointly; the door had been flung open, and a man was standing there, the beam lighting his open, handsome face contrasting glaringly with the sudden dismayed shock registering on the faces of both Christine and – could it only be seen through the mask – Erik.

Erik rose immediately, and Christine's voice abruptly ceased.

"Armand!" she said, her voice registering confusion and discomfort. "I told Reeves to tell you that –"

"Oh, he did," the man said cheerfully. "You mustn't blame Reeves; he was deeply apologetic and frantic that I shouldn't be offended but absolutely resolute that I mustn't come in. The fault, I fear, is all mine; I've behaved horrifically badly, and I shall have to beg on bended knee for forgiveness at a later date. I was fully intending to go home and sulk for a week until you came to see me again, but then I was passing the drawing room, and I heard the voice of an angel; and I just couldn't resist just popping my head around the door to say hello and tell you that you simply must perform for me one day. But forgive me; where are my manners?" He held one hand out to Erik, who regarded him with disdain for a moment before St Cyr withdrew his hand, bewildered, and looked uncomfortably at Christine.

"Erik, this is the Marquis de St Cyr," she stammered, glancing anxiously at Erik, half-expecting him to disappear as he was, she knew, so capable of doing. "Armand, this is … my singing teacher," she concluded, with a sudden burst of inspiration.

Both St Cyr and Erik looked at her in astonishment. St Cyr was the first to recover himself, and smiled. 

"Well, how wonderful!" he said heartily. "I didn't know you had started having singing lessons again, Christine … although I suppose I should have guessed when I heard someone playing the piano without constant stops and starts and complaints of how impossibly difficult the piano is!" He looked at Erik for some response, but Erik was standing well back, silent and stoic in the corner. Confused and uncomfortable, St Cyr glanced back at Christine with one eyebrow raised in silent question.

Christine was twisting her hands nervously together, her eyes flickering from one man to the other with anxiety.

"Well, er …" St Cyr forced an awkward smile. "I suppose I had better be off and leave you two to your lesson … Christine, if I call tomorrow …?"

"Yes," she agreed quickly. "Yes, that's fine."

"I'll … er … I'll show myself out."

St Cyr held out his hand to Erik and then, remembering his earlier response, withdrew it and made an awkward gesture of parting towards him. "It was very nice to meet you, Monsieur … I hope we may meet again."

He left the room hurriedly, and after a moment of exchange with the butler, Christine heard the front door close behind him.

She crossed the room and sank into a chair, passing a hand across her forehead.

"I'm so sorry," she said at last. "It never even occurred to me that he would come in after Reeves had told him I wasn't receiving …" She sighed, drawing one slender hand back through her hair, unaware of the expression, hastily suppressed, which flickered momentarily in Erik's eyes as the light caught in her curls, turning them for an instant into spun gold.

Erik still had not moved, and still stood straight and unbending in the corner over by the piano. "It's hardly your fault, my dear," he said stiffly.

The word reverberated through both of them; Christine struck to the heart by the unexpected wave of emotion his casual term of endearment engendered, Erik appalled at his inability to keep himself from falling back into old patterns.

"I … think that I had better go," he said finally, looking around for his cloak.

This time, Christine made no attempt to stop him.

Erik gathered his cloak and hat into his arms and stood, irresolute, for a moment. He felt Christine's eyes on him, saw her arm curled around her waist, her fingers picking anxiously at the skirt of her dress, and his mind reeled at the awareness that she was, inconceivably, standing less than a foot away from him for the first time in the longest four years of his life.

"I would appreciate it if you could ensure that your friend does not publicise details of today throughout the _corps de ballet_," he said at last. "There has been no trouble at the Paris Opera for over four years; I see no value in creating any now."

Christine nodded. "Of course," she said softly.

She hesitated for just a moment, and Erik made as if to leave, inclining his head to her in a familiar gesture of courtesy that tore at her heart, and moving towards the door.

All of a sudden, she came to a decision, and took a step forward.

"Erik!"

Startled, he turned back to her, his hand still on the door handle.

Christine hesitated a moment longer, her hands tangled anxiously at her waist for a moment, and then quickly stepped forward and pressed a kiss against his cheek.

"Come and see me again," she whispered, pressing his hand.

Erik stood utterly still, stricken, unable to credit the feeble evidence of his senses, a fire he had long thought extinguished rising in his heart. He almost took a step towards her, almost stretched out his hand to her, almost opened his mouth and spoke to her: _almost. _

But he had too long relied on the walls he had so long ago set up around his heart, and had, somewhere in the anguished darkness of life ever since Christine, found solace in protecting his heart against the torment of loving anyone as he had her ever again. The pain of the months of nightmares, utter despair and incapacitating loneliness following her loss was still too fresh, and he could not bring himself to allow her back into his heart.

Struggling to take back his composure, and trying desperately to slow the frantic hammering of his heart, he nodded blindly to Christine and went out of the room, barely even seeing the butler hovering outside as he opened the big front door and strode out into the street.

The imposing stature of the tall man swathed in black with a wide-brimmed hat drawn down low over his eyes as he strode away from Christine's house betrayed nothing of his inner agitation to the curious eyes of the servants as they watched his departure through the scullery window, until Reeves shooed them away to continue their duties.

Only Sarah, a small kitchen maid with curly dark hair not unlike her mistress', escaped the butler's wrath, and crept away to watch out of the small circular window in her bedroom. As she crouched at the window, she was sure she saw the figure stop and make an angry motion with one gloved hand across his eyes, throwing his head back to stare into the sky, grey and overcast with clouds threatening rain. 

She heard the voice of one of the maids outside in the hall, and in the half-second in which she took her eyes away from the window to glance anxiously over her shoulder to make sure she was not observed, he vanished into thin air.

Sarah pondered a good deal over the mysterious caller. At dinner that night, the servants discussed who he might have been, and why he had come; the general consensus seemed to be that he was an old acquaintance of the mistress' late husband, an old friend from England or Sweden or – a theory put forward by the footman, who had a penchant for lurid murder mysteries – a blackmailer who had come for the sole purpose of driving their mistress to the edge of her sanity until she cracked and terrible things ensued. Sarah shook her head involuntarily; the man had seemed to her to be sad rather than villainous or – God forbid – ordinary: a tragic figure worthy of the penny novels she bought at the grocer's. She decided he was a shadowy figure from the mistress' past, an unsuccessful suitor in the days before her marriage, and still desperately in love with her.

All her suggestion gained her was a lecture on respecting the privacy of one's betters and the evil of inattention to one's duties.

It was perhaps appropriate that, of all the educated and intelligent servants in Christine's house, the only one to suspect the truth between Christine and Erik was a teenage kitchen maid who had never met her mistress, and had never been to school.


	7. Chapter VII

A/N – for Maya, as good luck for the job; and for Lavendar, just because she's lovely.

Hugs to everyone who liked the new choice of title – there are not enough Pimpy fans out there!

Angelic Lawyer: I think the remark about the English novels is the single nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you :)

Christine Persephone: I hadn't been planning to reintroduce Sarah, but since you asked so nicely – I'll see what I can do :)

The revised chapters are now all up (I think … this new method of uploading scares me.), but nothing dramatic has changed. A more complete overhaul will, I think, come in the summer, when I'll properly alter everything – when, in short, I have time!

Hugs and cookies to everyone who's reviewed – you make my day, every one of you.

*          *          *          *          *          *

Erik slowly bent down, and from beneath his bed, he drew the dusty, long-untouched case of his violin. Very slowly, his hands shaking slightly, he undid the clasps one by one, and opened the lid.

_How strange_; the violin nestled in the red velvet of the case's lining looked just as it had the last time he had seen it. Somehow he had expected it to have changed, as he felt he himself had changed. Even more strangely, for the first time in years, he found himself able to look on it without wrenching pain that threatened to tear him in two.

Perhaps he was beginning to heal.

His music had slowly returned to him over the last four years; it had been a painful reconciliation, and had cost him much to overcome the ache that the remembrance of his previous musical efforts had induced. But even so, he had not been able to bring himself to resurrect his violin.

He lifted the instrument into his hands and turned it gently, almost afraid to touch it. The violin had always been symbolic of his relationship with Christine – whilst the piano had been used for rehearsal, through necessity, the violin had always been his instrument of choice for playing to her outside lessons, moments he clung to as evidence that she had wanted to be with him.

As time had worn on, and she and Raoul had become closer, the violin had stayed in its case for longer and longer periods of time until, at last, it was not needed at all.

Erik stroked one long hand sadly along the polished wood. Just as the violin had not changed, nor had he, he supposed, not really. He knew now that his efforts to convince himself that Christine's hold over him had loosened, and then finally evaporated, had been empty as he himself had felt empty; his brittle new self-sufficiency and independence from Christine had disintegrated, slipping through his fingers so that he was no longer quite sure that it had ever been there at all.

He sighed, and replaced the violin carefully in its case without touching the strings.

He heard a small mew at his side, and felt a small soft weight leap up to curl at his side. Smiling in spite of himself, he drew the small cat into his arms and held her close to him, treasuring the soft warmth of her body against his.

"So what do you think, Margot?" he asked tenderly, tipping her chin with one gentle finger. The cat purred delightedly and rubbed her head fiercely against his hand, adoring and possessive. 

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" he continued, a little sadly, stroking the cat's fur back where she had ruffled it in her frantic enthusiasm. Marguerite purred, a reaction that could only be taken for assent. 

"I know," he conceded wearily. "It's ridiculous, isn't it? A man of my age … and she still so young." Marguerite rubbed her head against her master's face and settled down to sleep in his arms. Erik was caught off guard, and the rush of emotion that greeted the softness of her nose against the horror that was his face unexpectedly forced him to blink back tears.

 "I thought I had forgotten her," he said at last, his voice suddenly unsteady. "I thought … I thought I had begun to be able to live without her." He sighed and drew a hand across Marguerite's head. "This is always the way it was, you know. I would think I was beginning to regain my senses; and then I would hear her voice, or see her smile, and my common sense would just dissolve."

Erik looked down at the little cat nestled in his arms, the closest to human contact he would ever come again.

"You are right, of course," he said softly. "I will not go to her. It could do neither of us any good."

*          *          *

Erik's resolution lasted far longer than he had expected it to. He had made similar promises to himself before, and had always shamefacedly broken them, finding himself unable to stay away from her. 

This time, however, he found the ever-present desire to see her tempered by the agonising memory of her rejection. It was easy to remind himself of the pain that she inevitably brought, and, armed with that memory, it was easier to resist the deeply repressed part of his heart which still ached for her.

*          *          *

It was a hot day in August, and Erik was bent over a frustratingly disorganised shuffle of papers on his desk. Much though he adored Marguerite, her effect on his paperwork irritated him to such an extent that he had seriously considered purchasing a lock for the study door.

But then, where would he be without the occasional caress of a wet nose against his hand as he worked? In the absence of she who would always be his Muse, Marguerite was the next best alternative, and her presence in the study had soothed his frustrated artistic side to such an extent that he had largely managed to break the habit of destroying unfinished work with which he was not happy on the spur of the moment, a practice which had often given him cause for bitter regret once the creative furore had left him.

Erik paused and looked up from the unfinished symphony before him to wipe the thin film of perspiration that had gathered his brow. It was entirely too hot to work; the heat had already forced him to remove his mask through sheer discomfort of the fabric rubbing on his skin, and although he knew the door was securely bolted – having checked before finally removing the mask – he remained uncomfortable and edgy about working with his face uncovered, and found himself reaching to the mask at intervals to reassure himself it was still within easy reach. It was funny, really: before Christine, he had thought nothing of spending days unmasked, even without checking the entrances to his underground haven. But now … somehow now he could ill bear the recollections that removing his mask inevitably brought, however hastily he tried to suppress them, and had even taken to sleeping with his face covered. 

Erik sighed and brushed the score to one side, frustrated at his lack of success, and scooped Marguerite into his arms.

"I think I need a break, little one," he murmured, tracing patterns in her fur with his index finger. "Perhaps a holiday …" An image of him and his cat taking the sun in Spain made him smile in spite of himself.

There came a knock at the door, and Erik glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece with a frown. Nadir was early. For a moment, he considered leaving his old friend out on the doorstep to worry himself into a frenzy over Erik's absence, but on reflection, when the alternative was an infuriatingly uncooperative scale of minor chords in D minor, Nadir's occasionally overprotective company did not seem such an unwelcome prospect.

He rose and slipped the mask back on, still clasping Marguerite in his arms, and opened the door.

The sight that greeted him dried his voice in his throat and sent a sudden spell of dizziness over him, so intense that for a moment he thought he might faint.

Christine bit her lip and tried to smile. The truth was that she was intensely nervous, and Erik's expression of obvious shock and a flicker of something she feared might be displeasure in his eyes had stolen what remained of her resolve.

He was holding a small ginger cat in his arms, she realised; as she watched, he dropped it to the carpet and shooed it into the house.

"I …" she began, flushing hotly, casting desperately around for something to say. Nothing she had planned sounded quite right now. "What a beautiful cat."

She saw Erik relax infinitesimally and knew that she had found the key; be it his music or a waif kitten, she had known that the key to penetrating Erik's inner fortress was something he treasured as he once had her.

What she would do once she was inside, she had no idea.

"Thank you," he managed. His heart, which he was quite sure had stopped with a thud at his first glimpse of her, appeared to have restarted, and was now racing with painful urgency. "I … forgive me, do come in …"

Erik glanced around the flat as she accepted the invitation, momentarily regretting the mess of papers he had left strewn over his desk and the architectural plans and unfinished music covering the guest armchair.

Christine stood shyly by a small mahogany table, also scattered with sheets covered with music notation, registering an unexpected feeling of coming home. Small and airy as the flat was, it was undoubtedly Erik's; everything from the piano, which took up at least half of this front room, to the immense numbers of books she could see lining the walls of the next room through a door to her left, all infused with the unobtrusive but encompassing scent of sandalwood and candle wax, reminded her of him.

The man himself stood behind her, his mind in utter turmoil that he prayed desperately would not show through the mask. Seeing her glance around, he swept an armful of papers out of the guest armchair and gestured for her to sit.

He himself remained standing, unable to unbend to her quite enough to allow himself to sit, and took advantage of his armful of music to give himself a moment to gather his composure as he arranged it on the piano. 

The light glinted off the ring on the little finger of his left hand, and he hastily slipped it from his finger and dropped it into his pocket. Save the humiliating moment at her house that day, it had never left his hand since she had returned it to him: he had found himself unable to part with it, and hated himself for the weakness. It would not do to let her know that he still treasured that one inadequate symbol of their relationship more than anything in the world.

Erik heard her shift uncomfortably and knew that he could put off the first awkward moment of conversation no longer. He turned to face her, holding his hands very still in an effort to keep her from seeing him tremble.

His first words – or perhaps more the tone in which he delivered them – took Christine aback.

"You must forgive my discourtesy upon receiving you," he said, quite earnestly. "I must confess I had not expected to see you here. I … still cannot for the life of me imagine how you managed to obtain this address."

She laughed with sheer relief that he had not ordered her out directly, passing a hand through her hair in a charmingly nervous gesture.

 "I wrote to Nadir."

Erik stood very still, struck to the heart by this blinding new revelation, silent for a long time.

"You have been in touch with Nadir?" he inquired at last, forcing his fingers to move over the piano and shuffle a sheaf of music in an immense effort to regain his composure.

Christine nodded in assent. "Yes ... he wrote to me a short while after ..." there was an infinitesimal pause, "after Raoul died to offer his condolences, and I wrote to him when I returned to France." She smiled fondly. "He's really rather nice, under all that prickly foreignness. He took me out to dinner the other day … I think perhaps he's a bit lonely, all alone in Paris. Did you know he was once married?"

Erik nodded automatically. "Yes ..." he murmured unthinkingly, still unable to react to the revelation that Nadir - his _friend_, the only person he had been able to find it in his heart to trust since Christine - had been writing to Christine, meeting her,  _taking her out to dinner_ ...

Christine, oblivious as ever, had continued talking. "Yes, in Persia, he told me; it's terribly sad. Such a nice man."

Erik did not reply. He sat down slowly, aware that his hands were shaking badly now, and infuriated at his inability to prevent himself from betraying his inner agitation. He had been a fool ever to think that he might be ready to see her again without distress: he would never be ready.

Christine, slightly unnerved by his silence, shifted in her chair and looked around for the cat, hoping it would prove a talking point again. But it let her down; the cat had disappeared into the book room, and was nowhere to be seen.

"How long have you been in Paris?" Erik asked at last, settling for banality in the hope that it would help him recover his shattered poise.

"Ever since ..." she broke off, and Erik, foreseeing her answer, cursed himself for not realising before. Christine had closed her eyes, and was biting her lip as she fumbled for a handkerchief. Silently Erik rose and handed her one, hearing her barely audible gratitude as if from a distance.

For a time there was silence in the room as Christine, screwing up her eyes, fought to contain herself.

At last she sat up and smiled weakly.

"About four years now," she amended.

Erik looked up at her. "I am very sorry," he said, very softly.

In that moment, faced with such unexpected compassion from the man from whom she least deserved it, Christine knew that she was going to cry. She pressed his handkerchief to her face, squeezing her eyes shut, fighting the prickle of tears behind her eyes and the ache in her throat.

She did not see the concern in Erik's eyes, mingled with guilt and grief that, even now, he could say nothing that did not result in her pain. 

Christine sat with her eyes closed for a long time, fighting to control herself. 

"Here."

She opened her eyes to see Erik offering her a cup of tea. She took it gratefully, closing her hands around the cup to draw out its warmth.

"It's Russian, I'm afraid … had I been expecting you, I would have obtained something a little more to your taste," he said in hesitant apology.

Christine took a sip of the tea and smiled. The truth was that she had actually come to drink Russian tea quite regularly after Raoul's passing; like the scent of sandalwood and Gounod's _Faust_, it would always hold irrevocable connections in her mind to the man she had thought lost to her forever, and it had comforted her to drink it, and remember.

She sipped at the tea, feeling Erik's eyes on her even as she looked down into her cup.

"You must forgive my coming here," she said at last, looking up to look Erik in the face. "It must seem very strange. It's just that …" she passed a hand unconsciously through her hair. "It's just that I've missed you, ever since – well –" she went scarlet as she realised the hole she had managed to talk herself into. 

She looked up nervously to meet Erik's eyes. He met her eyes, his expression stoical.

"We both know how things have happened between us, Christine," he said tiredly. "I myself would have imagined there was more than enough reason in our past to make further encounters undesirable; but you of course know best."

"Is it only the bad that you remember?" she asked, stung by the edge of bitterness in his voice. "Do you not remember that there was once a time when we enjoyed being together?" 

Erik's mind moved unbidden back to a softly-lit montage of life under the Opera, times that even now he could not quite bear to think of for fear that the grief for her loss would undo him. When he closed his eyes, he could still hear the sound of her laughter musical across the dinner table, set with a single rose; still see the occasional sojourn to a nearby park, moonlight glinting off the snow that blanketed the ground; and a hundred memories a thousand times more precious: days when they had sung together, or he had played for her; the wordless devotion in her eyes still warmed him in those lonely nights when he lay wretched and sleepless, unable to forget.

Yes, by God, he remembered. And in remembering, it was all he could do not to weep for that which he had lost; that which could never be regained. 

Christine, watching him, recognised the slight softening of his manner and the infinitesimal easing of tension in his shoulders, and knew a moment of breathless relief. He had not allowed the time they had shared together to fade into the back of his memory.

"You do remember," she said, very quietly.

His answer, when it came, was so soft as to be almost inaudible. "Yes …"

Christine closed her eyes and breathed a silent sigh of relief.

*

When she left his house an hour later, Erik sat alone in the sitting room. They had talked for what seemed like hours, and he found himself trembling in the aftershock of such an unexpected encounter.

Somehow – he was not quite sure how – they had made arrangements for her to come again, in two days' time, on the promise of a singing lesson. He felt utterly bewildered; from what he had gathered from their conversation, she had not kept up her singing even as a hobby, and her suddenly earnest desire to resurrect her voice and – perhaps, dared he hope? – her career had taken him aback. The prospect of melding his voice with hers again was indescribable – after all these years, to be granted a second chance.

He leaned his aching head forward to rest on the back of his chair. However vehemently he might deny it to Nadir, he could no longer deny himself the truth: he knew now that he still loved her, and any pretext that would allow him to share her air and hear her voice again would suffice.

*

Back in her own home in the Rue de , Christine laid her head against the back of the sofa and breathed deeply for what seemed like the first time in hours. Her own request for a singing lesson had surprised even her with its audacity; but, she reasoned, it had always been through music that they had best understood each other, and she had missed her singing, more than she had expected to.

Erik's manner had surprised her: she had not expected such kindness. She knew, deep in her heart, that she did not deserve it, and an insistent little voice prodded at the corner of her mind, insinuatingly questioning why he had forgiven her so easily. 

_Could it be …?_

She shook her head fiercely. Unfair, to attempt to divine his motives when she was not yet even sure of her own.

She sighed and pressed her hand against her cheek. All she knew was that for the first time since Raoul's death, she felt animated at the prospect of society, and that the man whose rejection she had feared above all else had forgiven her.

What harm could come of it?

*          *          *

"Can you imagine what I felt when she arrived out of the blue on my doorstep? And then to learn that you have been in correspondence with her these _four years_!" Erik passed a hand furiously through his hair.

"I cannot understand you," he said at last, struggling to contain himself. "You, who have spent the last four years urging me to purge her from my mind! To see her again, after all this time, _at your doing_ …"

Feeling that he was veering a little too close to betraying the inner turmoil that had raged within him since he had first recognised Christine in the street, Erik allowed his anger at Nadir to regain the upper hand.

 "And to give her my address! How could you be so _unthinking_?"

Nadir could only gape at the irrationality of a man who could rage so at the reappearance of the woman whom he had spent the last four years longing to see.

"I thought that you would want to see her," he said quietly. "If I was wrong, please believe me when I say how sorry I am."

Erik made a violent gesture of frustration and lapsed into brooding silence, and Nadir thought with a faint tinge of sadness how much more comfortable Erik seemed berating Nadir for his betrayal than admitting anything resembling emotion.

Erik had withdrawn into himself utterly, lapsing into that state of brooding reticence which Nadir uncomfortably recognised as dangerous. They completed the chess match in all but silence, despite Nadir's occasional efforts to lighten the mood with attempts to be funny that fell as flat as a pancake.

At last, Erik rose and gathered his cloak up. Nadir caught at his arm, realising his mistake only as Erik flinched instinctively at the unexpected contact.

"Forgive me," he said earnestly. "You must believe me when I say I believed I was acting for the best."

Erik stared at him for a moment, aloof and imposing, and then nodded slowly, the rigidity of his form relaxing for a moment.

"I am not angry with you," he said wearily. "You were not to know."

"Erik …" Nadir hesitated, then gathered his courage, "did you not _want_ to see her again? I had thought …"

"You think too much, my friend," Erik said shortly, and although his tone was even, Nadir recognised the warning that flashed in his dark eyes.

They stood silently for a moment, then Erik withdrew from Nadir's hand and moved towards the door.

"Another match next week, Erik?" Nadir called after him.

Erik glanced up and raised one eyebrow theatrically. "I do believe your compulsion to surrender your money to me is becoming a habit, Nadir," he said, his dark eyes displaying something that could almost be humour. "I'm not altogether sure I should not refuse to play you again and save you from yourself."

Nadir smiled, relieved to see his friend's good humour restored. Erik tipped his hat ironically to the daroga, and drawing it down low over his eyes, strode away down the street.

Nadir went back inside and closed the door beside him, thinking deeply. He was beginning to feel a slight prick of doubt that he had done the right thing in allowing Christine to follow Erik again. He had been sure that he was justified; but now, looking upon the violence of Erik's reaction, he was no longer so sure.

If Nadir had been asked two or three years ago to reveal Erik's location to Christine Daaé, he would have laughed: at that time, he had seen Christine as nothing more than the agent of Erik's anguish for the past two years, and Nadir's loyalty to his friend had dictated an instant dislike for the fickle young woman whose vacillations had caused so much pain to one so dear to Nadir as Erik had become.

But upon Christine's return to Paris, a correspondence had sprung up between them, so unexpectedly that Nadir hardly knew how it had begun. Loyalty to Erik, and fear of the violence of his friend's reaction should he learn that his former pupil was back in Paris, had made him heartily unwilling to enter into correspondence with the woman he still distrusted and whom he could not forgive for the injury she had caused his dearest friend.

And yet somehow, the short courtesy replies to Christine's letters had developed into something more. The sympathy he felt for one who, like himself, had lost an obviously beloved spouse gave him his first insight into the better parts of Christine, and slowly, as their correspondence grew, he came to understand her better; now, almost three years on, he was very fond of her indeed.

Oh, he was not in love with her; – his friendship for Erik could never permit such an absolute betrayal – but suddenly he could understand why Erik still treasured her memory after all these years.

When Christine's request came for Erik's direction, Nadir had hesitated. But Christine's insistence, and her recital of what had occurred between them that day in July – leaving Nadir disappointed but unsurprised that Erik had not told him of it himself – had finally managed to win him over.

Nadir had seen Christine grow and mature in the days since her husband's death; and the fondness with which she had always spoken of Erik, coupled with her new-found strength, had led Nadir to believe that she might now be capable of returning Erik's love for her.

Not that he could ever have explained this to Erik, of course. 

*          *          *

As Erik and Christine began to spend more time together, and slowly, ever so slowly, began to rebuild their relationship, Erik found himself falling in love with her all over again. She was still everything that had originally led him to care for her; solicitous, caring, utterly and quite unconsciously sweet, but no longer a frightened child scrambling for a crevice in a cruel world. From the time of her father's death, she had known tragedy, and she had survived it; and she was stronger for the experience.

For the past three years, he had firmly told himself that he was clinging to a memory, to a woman he no longer knew. _It isn't possible to love someone you haven't seen for four years,_ he had repeatedly told himself, furious at his continued weakness. _She is a different woman._

But denial was no longer a viable option; he had been right, she had changed, she was a different woman.

And he loved her all the better for it.


	8. Chapter VIII

A/N – For Claire Starling, for the most rapturous response to the Pimpernel references I could ever have hoped for!

Christine Persephone – "something horrible" – how well you know me. This horrible enough for you? :)

And as for the end of this chapter … I think it's a result of watching Lisa Vroman unmask Brad Little one too many times. My apologies are sincere; I can't think why I did it.

Much love and hugs to all those who take the time to review; I love you all, you make my day :)

~

Both Erik and Christine had worried for hours over the inevitable awkwardness that must shadow their first singing lesson in almost five years. 

Erik had driven himself almost to distraction with anxiety in the days that had passed between their meetings; he tidied the flat from top to bottom, and put the small framed portraits of her that he still treasured away in a drawer. He could not bear the thought of her seeing them, however accidentally. After a moment's hesitation, he added the small gold ring that had once belonged to her. He locked the drawer, and slipped the key into his pocket.

He returned to check that he had indeed locked it properly at least twice that afternoon.

Christine, in true female style, tried on every dress she possessed in anticipation of their lesson. Unable to think of any profitable way to displace her agitation, she tried them all on again, and put them all away. She did half of a rather crooked needlework; she read half of the first chapter of a book. She attempted to play the piano to calm herself, but finding that this last activity especially increased her tension exponentially, she finally called on St Cyr and went for a long walk with him around his estate.

And of course, on the morning of the long-awaited lesson, she did not even notice which dress she put on.

~

In the end, it was all very simple. He received her gracefully – and he had tidied away the reams of music spread over every available surface, she noticed – and produced her favourite brand of tea.

Somehow, it was all very much as it had been before, and while Christine delighted in his company, and Erik's heart thrilled to have her so near again, they both felt a flicker of anxiety somewhere deep inside. For Erik, this emotion was both comprehensible and easily defined: he was afraid of surrendering his heart to her again and risking his sanity on her trust; for Christine, it was less identifiable. Waiting for the lesson had made her sick with nerves, and she was thoroughly ashamed of the condition of her voice; and yet Erik had been supremely chivalrous. He had not commented on the depletion of her range or her slightly off-pitch tone, but had resurrected her old vocal exercises and was slowly, steadily, patiently recreating the instrument she had allowed to fall into such shameful repair.

The first time they sang together again, it was hard to say which of them was closer to tears.

~

Gradually they slid back into a routine. By an unspoken pact, they did not speak of the past. They spoke of music, art, books; again Erik began to purchase her books that he had read and thought she would enjoy; again she began to linger in his home long after her lesson was over.

Slowly, Erik's muse, largely absent over the past four years, began to return to him. Christine noticed, but did not comment on, the fresh stacks of hastily-scribbled music adorning the piano.

St Cyr noticed, and did comment on, how much happier Christine seemed to be of late. The first time he brought it up, Christine flushed, confused, and changed the subject. Later she considered the matter and realised that, as always, he was right. Erik's spirit had begun to pour liquid fire back into her soul; for the first time in years, she was able to think of Raoul without wrenching anguish: she was learning to remember their memories without dwelling on the future that they did not have.

Slowly, and utterly unknowingly, they were once again beginning to give each other the _joie de vivre_ they had forgotten they could feel.

~

It was a very ordinary day, really. When he looked back on it, he could not even remember what day it had been. A Wednesday, perhaps. 

Whatever day it began as, it ended as the day that Erik knew his absent muse had returned. Perhaps it was the sunshine pouring through the window, a sensation which in spite of all his years above ground he still found exhilarating, if occasionally disconcerting; perhaps it was the lark joyously declaring the magic of the world in the tree outside his window. More likely, of course, it was the promise that Christine would be coming the next day; but of course Erik would not admit that to himself.

It must have been the lark, he told himself as the first swell of inspiration burst upon him, blinding and flaming as the sun; but as the music welled inside him, he ceased to care: for six years now, he had been desperately searching for the inspiration that would allow him to express what he felt for Christine; it had finally come to him.

Every note ached with longing, softly tender, despairingly romantic; and when it was finished, he collapsed back into his chair, exhausted and trembling with the emotion drawn from him. 

He came back into himself slowly, the euphoria of preserving his love within staves that remained steady even as his world might tip fading, and laughed with savage bitterness at the absurdity of it all. To think that music could make any difference! Even if she realised what the music meant, even if she recognised that he had poured his heart and soul into the devastatingly emotional notes, to think that her reaction would be anything short of disgust … or at the very least, pity …

He shuddered involuntarily. Perhaps pity was the worst emotion of all. He could bear her fear, her disgust, even her hatred – _oh God, please don't make me prove it, not again_ – but somehow the light of compassion in her eyes was the most painful of all to endure.

Erik passed a hand distractedly through his hair, abruptly withdrawing it as it came into contact with the cold edge of the mask. He winced, remembrance passing through him in a cold shower that stole his breath and his resolve.

Of course he could not give it to her. If nothing else, that sting of memory reminded him that he could never again entrust her with his heart; she would never reconcile herself to his love.

He shook his head savagely, warding off grief. Angry with himself now, he crumpled the paper in his hand and dropped it to the floor, and moved to the door as the claustrophobia he had thought long suppressed closed in on him again.

It made him angry to think that Christine could still reduce him to this, he thought irritably as he strode along a street, the exercise calming his jangled nerves. She had introduced him to so many new emotions, crystalline and fragile and exotically and intoxicatingly beautiful; and yet emotion left him vulnerable, open to the shadowed vestiges of pain that still lingered in the back of his mind. Since she had returned, he had found himself susceptible once again to the claustrophobia that had plagued him throughout his youth, yet another unwanted legacy of a childhood spent in captivity, and frequently found himself too nervous to work, agitating himself with anticipation of God only knew what. If it was she who inspired him to write his best music, he thought irritably, she did at least as much damage as good to his work by robbing him of his concentration. He frequently found himself staring into space, dreaming empty castles in the air that dissolved into nothingness as soon as he remembered himself, as soon as he came to and recognised the warmth of the sun on one cheek … and the cold kiss of porcelain on the other.

_And yet, I am content_, he told himself firmly. _To sit with her, and to hear her sing, and … it is enough._

Infuriated at his inability to sound convincing to even his own ears, he glanced up at the street around him in a conscious effort to force himself to think of something other than her.

It was with no little alarm that he realised that he was on a street filled with people. Panic welled up inside him, and he forced himself to take a deep breath to keep himself from losing control. He felt somebody bump into him and murmur an apology, heard another voice raised in castigation – "_not the best place to stand, mate_" – and his self-possession deserted him utterly. Unable to suppress the rising panic crashing through him, he made for a small alley off the main road and ducked into it, drawing his cloak tightly around him and pressing his face into the soft material in a vain bid to slow the deafening pounding of his heart.

Erik stood there, invisible in the shadows, for a very long time. Gradually – very gradually – the panic eased and he began to be able to breathe again. As he slowly regained possession of himself, hot shame welled up inside him, colouring his frustration and anger at himself black with self-castigation.

It had been years since he had lost control like that; years since the terror he had thought to have left behind with his adolescence had unnerved him so intensely. He was always uncomfortable around people, of course; but he had not lost his nerve so badly since … it must have been since his departure from Italy in a whirlwind of anguished loss. In the ensuing years he had become a master of manipulation, and had learned how easily people could be controlled – as long as he retained control over _himself_.

Erik shook his head furiously. That he should have overreacted so! He was thoroughly ashamed of himself. And yet – 

He looked out into the street, and felt the cold veil of dread sweep over him again. How could he bear to brave the myriad of eyes, the staring, the pointing, the unavoidable threat of violence? He felt trapped, and shrank back into the shadows, drawing his hat down low over his eyes, rendering himself invisible.

It was the thought of Marguerite, alone and hungry in the flat, wailing her especially pathetic mew that she reserved for special occasions, that finally drove Erik to take a deep breath and step out into the crowded street before he could think better of it.

As soon as he was out of the street and back on the Rue de , the feeling of cold sickness began to relax its grip on Erik. It infuriated him to find, however, even as he slowed his pace, forcing himself to relax in the solitude of the private neighbourhood in which he lived, that he was still trembling. He held his hand out in front of him, willing it to still, and his distress increased as he found himself unable to calm its tremor.

Furious at himself and his contemptible weakness, he strode back home, feeling the uncomfortably familiar tightness building in his chest.

~

Erik could not restrain a sigh of silent relief as his flat hoved into view. It said much for his still-distressed state of mind that he did not notice the small blue-cloaked figure walking disconsolately away from his front door; and as a result of this, he was caught completely off-guard when, as he turned the key in the lock, a small white hand clasped hold of his upper arm.

"_There_ you are!"

It was perhaps fortunate that Erik's morning had thus been so harrowing: the fact that the only conscious thought in his mind was to lock himself into his flat and put out all the lights until he felt calmer was the only thing that kept his usually razor-sharp reflexes from spelling an unfortunate end for his visitor.

As it was, the intense confusion induced by the unexpected touch slowed his arm enough for him to recognise Christine's voice.

She had released his arm, and was looking up at him, beaming. "I'm sorry, did I startle you?" She made an unsuccessful but deeply endearing effort to look contrite.

Erik took a deep breath and passed a hand across his face, this time barely even noticing how it shook.

"You did, rather," he murmured, feeling his pulse racing in his fingertips. Aware that Christine was looking at him slightly oddly, doubtless taken aback by his uncharacteristic discomposure, he made a conscious effort to pull himself together and smiled at her. "Forgive me – I don't recall our having planned a lesson for today …"

Christine beamed and shook her head. "Oh no, we didn't. No, I just …" she made a charming little shrug, "… just had a free afternoon and thought I might come and see you." Doubt entered her eyes, and her brow furrowed slightly. "You don't mind?"

Erik's heart leapt. That she should come to him willingly – unexpectedly! – was almost inconceivable. Suppressing the thrill he felt sure must betray itself in his eyes, he moved one hand in graceful denial. "No, of course not."  There was a brief, slightly awkward pause, and he stepped back from the door. "But forgive me – do go in."

Christine obeyed, and as Erik traced the line of her shoulder with his eye, wondering whether he dared take her cloak from her shoulders, a small furry thunderbolt hurled itself at his legs, winding herself around his feet and stealing his balance.

Christine, startled, turned to see Erik stumble as he moved his feet to avoid either stepping on his cat or allowing her to trip him, and she smiled inwardly. Moments such as these, when Erik appeared neither formal nor forbidding, Angel of Music nor Phantom of the Opera, but rather a man unique in so many ways and yet fundamentally no different to any other she knew were, although unusual – so rarely did he allow his façade of omnipotence to slip – becoming increasingly precious to her. She knew, perhaps better than anybody, just how far Erik really was from the frontispiece of indifferent dispassion he presented to the world; and it was comforting to know that inside the brilliance of his passion and the whirl of his temper hid a man like any other.

Erik, catching her eye, smiled wryly and gathered the cat, now purring violently with ecstatic satisfaction, up into his arms.

"Ludicrous animal," he said with a smile, drawing one finger across Marguerite's head, making the cat squirm in delight.

Christine laughed. "She's adorable."

"She's ridiculous," said Erik wryly, giving the lie to the cynicism shading his words by bestowing another caress that spoke volumes of his devotion to the little cat still purring rapturously in his arms.

He deposited Marguerite on the floor, where she rubbed up against his ankles and sat down on the floor to stare up at her master with adoration.

Christine giggled. "She certainly is fond of you."

Erik smiled unconsciously, and Christine saw his pride in his beloved pet. "She's more like a dog than a cat at times. And disgracefully spoilt – aren't you?" he addressed Marguerite, who purred and dug her claws into the thick plush carpet.

Christine laughed, and Erik's heart staggered at the sound. No matter how many times she came to him, no matter how often he saw her smile or heard her laugh, the rush of joy her presence brought would never fade. Oh, he loved her always, every moment of the day and night; but there was never a moment in which she was dearer to him than when her lovely face lit with a smile and her celestial soprano laughter rang in the air. She was exquisite, and he wanted her with an aching yearning that transcended the physical, exceeded the uncontainable desire to take her in his arms: her love was the golden apple he could never hope to achieve, and yet for which he could never surrender his hopeless quest.

Christine, unaware of the sudden change in Erik's mood, knelt down on the softness of the carpet and reached out gently to stroke Marguerite. The little ginger cat rolled over, stretching her small furry limbs, and purred rapturously.

Erik watched his two most beloved little ladies in silent adoration and drew in his breath in a sharp shuddering inhalation as Christine bestowed a caressing touch upon Marguerite that set the very core of him aflame. He suddenly wanted desperately to be out of the room.

"Tea, Christine?"

She glanced up from the cat quivering in ecstasy beneath her hands, and nodded, still smiling in amusement at Marguerite's exaggerated rapture. "Thank you."

~

Erik made his way to the kitchen and leaned his head against the wall, its surface cool beneath his aching forehead. His chest and arm felt tight again, his heartbeat erratic and painful against his chest. Forcing himself to straighten his back, he poured a glass of water with hands that were suddenly slow and far away, and took a sip; and suddenly the pain exploded down him, the brilliance of lightning and the crash of thunder intense in the magnitude of its agony. He was on his knees, gasping for breath, a dagger white-hot inside him, shards of broken glass cutting his hands as he choked, the mask suffocatingly tight and air suddenly in devastatingly short supply. 

~

Christine glanced up as she heard the shattering of glass come from the kitchen.

"Erik?" she called. "Is everything all right?"

There was no reply, and she rose, smoothing down her skirts, and made her way into the kitchen.

"Eri – oh, God!"

She flew to his side, falling to her knees beside him, seeing with distress the blood where he had cut himself on the broken glass that lay in a pool of water on the floor. He was gasping for breath, his head bent away from her, and she repeated his name, her voice shrilling with panic.

"Erik – Erik! Can you hear me?"

He shook his head with tremendous effort. He heard his own voice as if from far away; "_It's all right_"; and it was with a violent start of shocked emotion that almost rivalled the attack itself in intensity that he felt her hands on his face.

"Tell me what I can do," she begged, lifting his face to look him in the eye. "Tell me how to help!"

Erik's mind reeled. It had been so long since he had dared to dream of her touch; and now the sensation of her fingers on his skin robbed him of the power of coherent speech.

"Erik, please!"

The panic in her voice gave him strength; he did not want to upset her. Concentrating his mind and focusing every fibre of his being on the opposite wall, he raised himself to his feet with a mammoth effort. The exertion exhausted him; he clasped the worktop for support, concentrating his mind on blocking out the throbbing agony lancing through him.

Forcing himself to straighten, he shook off the iron rod bending his spine and moved unsteadily the few paces to the central room, seeking the solace of the couch.

He sat down heavily, and felt Christine at his arm.

"Erik, please, tell me what's wrong."

He did not quite dare to look at her. "I daresay it's just a touch of fatigue, my dear …" He closed his eyes, compelling himself not to wince. "I would appreciate a few hours of solitude … it was good of you to come, but tomorrow would perhaps be more convenient … or Monday," he amended, grudgingly acknowledging that he might not be fit to receive her so soon as the next day.

"Erik –" He heard the protestation in her voice and sought to suppress it. He managed to force a smile. 

"Please, leave me."

Christine looked at him for a moment in confusion, then turned and left.

Left alone, Erik collapsed onto the couch and lay quite still, closing his eyes in agony and willing the pain to subside.

_Thank God she wasn't here to see this._

Then he heard footsteps, and before he could sit up, he felt cool fingers brush the hair away from his forehead and heard the sloshing of water in a bowl. He tried to sit up, but her gentle hands stopped him.

"Shh," she murmured, dampening a cloth in the water and laying it against his head. "Lie still. The pain will ease if you stay still."

"Christine ..." He forced himself to sit up, gritting his teeth against the screaming agony that started again in his head. "I really would prefer that you leave … there is no need for you to be here."

_Leave and let me make a fool of myself in private._

She laughed softly and pressed him back down onto the sofa. 

"Don't be silly," she said with a smile, brushing back the hair that had fallen into his eyes. "You just lie still and I'll play nurse for an hour or two." She seemed calmer now; Erik smiled in spite of himself. Of all her little idiosyncrasies, this was one of the things that he loved most about her: panic though she might at the slightest knot in her plans, as soon as she had something to do to take her mind off it she became sedate and surprisingly efficient. He smiled, very faintly, even that slight motion an effort.

She laid her hand against his forehead, her fingers smoothing cool fire across the agony in his head.

"You're burning," she murmured, her forehead creasing with concern. "What do you usually do when this happens? Is there medication you can take?"

Erik closed his eyes against the hammering of pain in his head and tried to manufacture a smile.

"No," he whispered. "It will ease soon …" Soon, the lancing of knives in his chest and the thud of hammers solidly into his head would recede, leaving only a dull, debilitating ache that would steal his strength like a slow poison and render him weak as a kitten before frustration and sheer bloody-mindedness forced him back onto his feet.

He heard her shift her position slightly, kneeling on the floor.

"You know, my dear, you are going to cripple yourself if you continue to sit on the floor," he told her, trying to take her mind away from the heat in his head. 

Christine smiled and stood up. "I'll go and make us some tea, then. Unless –" her face clouded "– unless you shouldn't drink tea for a bit?"

He shook his head and regretted it as Thor took up his hammer once again. "No, tea would be very welcome … thank you."

Erik closed his eyes as Christine moved out of his field of vision. Sleep came through his haze of exhaustion fast and soothing, but as its velvet curtain obscured his senses, he wondered vaguely whether Christine would stay the night … and just how he would bear the joy of it if she did.

~

Christine returned to the sitting room carrying two cups of tea, spilling an embarrassing amount of the overfull cups' contents into the saucers, and wondering if she could make it back into the kitchen to make the drinks a little more presentable without Erik's noticing.

She stopped abruptly at the sight that met her eyes, and icy fear drenched her in cold perspiration. She deposited the teacups rather abruptly on the table, ignoring the liquid that splashed out to mark the wood, and ran to Erik's side. His eyes were closed, and his unmasked cheek was pale and unguarded. 

Her pulse slowed as she saw his chest rise and fall, and she laughed softly to herself with embarrassed relief as she realised he was asleep.

She stood up as quietly as she could, holding her skirts to keep them from rustling, and glanced ruefully at her abandoned cups of tea.

"And after I even managed to light that wretched samovar," she said with mock reproach to Marguerite, who was curled up on top of the piano, watching Christine sleepily.

Christine sighed and retrieved the teacups, stroking her finger with a faint smile along the red and white roses that twined around the china.

"Has Erik ever told you the story of the red rose?" she asked Marguerite, holding up the teacup to show the little cat. Her face changed as she remembered that story; she grew sad. "No, I don't suppose he would have," she murmured, holding the teacup a little closer to her.

Marguerite made a little meow, and Christine smiled sadly. "It's not a very happy story," she whispered, tickling the little cat gently under her chin and bearing the unneeded cups of tea back into the kitchen.

Christine returned to the sitting room a short time later, having cleared up the prodigious mess she had somehow managed to make in the process of producing two cups of – even she had to admit – rather indifferent tea. She smiled involuntarily: she remembered, a long time ago, Erik drinking an entire cup of her tea with a poker straight face, determined to finish it in order to avoid hurting her feelings. She had not realised the depth of devotion that engendered until she had taken a mouthful from her own cup. Only the deepest and most entrenched desire not to look a fool in front of her teacher had kept her from spitting the concoction straight back into the cup. And yet Erik had finished his entire cup without even a grimace …

She knelt by the couch, smiling at the memory of Erik's unfailing kindness. Her hand rose to his face to brush away a lock of hair that had fallen into his eyes, and her fingers unexpectedly brushed a ridge of scar tissue emerging from the concealing border of the mask. She snatched her hand away instantly, her heart suddenly pounding.

He had not been kind always. The man who had read to her for hours on end, written her music that would have made the angels weep, swallowed her dreadful tea without even a flicker of distaste, abandoned his own pursuits at a moment's notice to help her with her libretto; this was the same man who had attacked Raoul, murdered two men, had terrorised the entire population of the Opera Garnier for years.

Christine withdrew, suddenly confused. Why was it so hard to reconcile the two? The two distinct and manifest personas he adopted – the aloof, abrupt Angel of Music, unprepared to tolerate a lapse in concentration or a missed rehearsal, and the malevolent Phantom – seemed to her so remote from the man she had come to know. When had she first realised that Erik was a real person? Was it the first time he had played to her on the violin? the night on the roof when they had watched the sunset and, as they turned back to the stairs, she had been sure for one brief, ecstatically exhilarating and terrifying moment that he was going to kiss her? It had not been in that ghastly, supremely painful moment when she had first seen his face; that at least was certain.

She shook her head, and her eye wandered again to the border on his forehead where the mask met his hair. If she brushed his hair back, she would be able to see the edges of the crevices and ridges that heralded the beginning of his deformity. She wondered briefly whether she remembered how he looked unmasked. It had been so long … she wondered if she would still be afraid. 

A very little voice whispered something in the back of her mind. She put down the idea immediately; _it was a terrible idea. Supremely unjust. He would never forgive her …_

_But then, need he necessarily know? He seemed to be fast asleep … and she could always replace it before he awakened … or pretend that it had come free of its own accord …_

She passed her hand over his face a few times, experimentally. He did not stir.

Her common sense bubbled, pressing on the back of her throat.

_He would never forgive her …_

_But then, she had seen him before. It was not now the betrayal of his trust it had been so many years ago._

She lowered her fingers tentatively, cautiously, inexpressibly lightly to the ridge of distortion visible at the crest of his forehead, ready to snatch away her fingers should he wake. He shifted very slightly, and she withdrew her hand instantly, her heart pounding. She waited. Her touch did not appear to have woken him; he sank back into sleep.

_He would never forgive her._

She could see the tie that would free the mask to her hands. 

_If she was careful – if she was gentle … he would never know. If he did not know, then how could he be angry?_

Christine stretched out her hand and cautiously, so slowly she felt her hand might shatter with the tension, pulled experimentally at the tie that would allow her to lift the mask away from his face. It gave way without resistance, and Erik did not stir.

Christine hesitated. Then, quickly, before her nerve could fail her, she reached out and lifted the mask from his face in one swift motion.

She barely had time to glimpse the distorted malformation of Erik's face before his hand came up, the reaction immediate, visceral, sleep torn away with his porcelain protection. He was upright on the couch in a moment so swift that he barely seemed to move, his hand over his face, his eyes frenetically scanning the room.

They locked onto Christine's.

The sound that tore from Erik's throat, horrified in betrayal, strangled with anguish, haunted her sleep for months to come.


	9. Chapter IX

A/N – Believe it or not, the last chapter was supposed to end with cuteness and fluff … I'm still not quite sure why I changed it. Huge hugs and lots of thanks to Julie (to whom I owe the phrase "it is always darkest before the dawn"), Jenna, Stephanie and everyone else who put up with my whinging about this chapter, and to Riene for beta-reading it for me and giving me the final kick to post it. Love you all :)

I have vague memories of writing snippets of this chapter in History lessons, which shows me just how long it's been since I last posted: I'm sorry! Blame exams, blame work, blame my muse for having gone into hiding in a remote cave somewhere in Siberia … blame my inherent incapability to update within a reasonable time scale. Even now it's not what I hoped it would be: it's still too choppy and too wordy – I do know that – but I decided it was better to get this sticky chapter out the way so that we can get on to the fun chapters yet to come. It will get better … I promise.

Happy Christmas, all :)

Christine took a step back, still clutching the mask in one limp hand.

"Erik –"

He was on his feet, advancing towards her. "Give me –" A choked sound escaped him, and she saw his eyes close in agony as his free hand clutched at his chest.

"Erik!" She took a step towards him, reaching out to him in alarm. "I'm sorry …"

His face twisted in anguish, and he reached out desperately for the mask.

Terrified, Christine timidly held out the mask and he snatched it, turning away from her to secure it.

"Get out," he whispered, still facing away from her.

Distressed, she reached out to him again. "Erik, please …"

"Get out!" His voice suddenly thunderous with rage. As he turned to look at her, his face once again an expressionless façade of porcelain, the expression in his eyes frightened her beyond endurance – oh, how could she have forgotten! This was just how he had looked five years ago … she could still see Raoul gasping for breath in the cruelty of Erik's noose.

"Erik, you're frightening me …"

"Go!" She almost thought she heard the catch of tears in his voice, but the ire in his eyes was enough to make her lose her nerve.

She gave a sob, and turned and fled.

Years of savage abuse at the hands of mankind had endowed Erik with instincts more feral than those conditioned by civilisation. Now, like a wounded animal going to ground, his only desire was to curl up and hide, immerse himself in darkness so deep as to conceal himself from the cruel eyes of the world forever.

He clutched at the mask with fingers that shook and fumbled in his distress, and, after several unsuccessful attempts that drove him almost wild with panic and frustration, fastened the straps once more around his head. The relief of feeling his greatest shame safely concealed again was immediate but insufficient to quiet the raging torrent of pain searing through him.

Erik collapsed onto the couch, tightness tensing his chest and shoulders again.

He could not think, could not breathe … the very thought of what she had done made him convulse, horrified, agonised, betrayed … he could not bear to think of it. Unbidden, the memory of the first time swelled inside him, and he curled in on himself, his hands fisted against his chest, his eyes screwed shut, desperately trying to suppress the pain.

One word resounded through the horror: _why?_

_How could she?_

She _knew_ … she had _always_ known …

Nausea rose in his throat. The very thought of her looking at him … it made him ill to think of it. He curled convulsively around himself, fisting his body into a foetal coil, desperation battling despair, the pain swelling, twisting within him, exploding down his spine, his own image burned onto the insides of his eyelids even as he squeezed them shut so tightly that his face ached.

He was _always_ aware of the mask with her, terribly, achingly, acutely aware every moment that he was with her that he was … _disgusting _… barely human. Of _course_ he knew.

When he was on his own, he could almost forget. When Marguerite applied her warm rough tongue to his cheek to wake him on the rare occasions he was able to cling on to sleep for longer than the span of a nightmare; when inspiration burst and blazed within him; when he was _alone_ … he could sometimes forget.

But with her … with her, every moment was a terrible consciousness of his inferiority, his inadequacy … the fact that he did not deserve her in the slightest measure; and, worst of all, that he could never grow to deserve her. Because he _was_ his failure: he was not deficient in something like understanding or education – something that he could have _changed_ – but in his very self.

_Barely human_ …

He had learned, by long and painful experience, that it was easier to hurt somebody quickly, before they could hurt him first. Christine was the only person to whom he found himself consistently unable to apply this rule. And – as life had always taught him to expect – the result was pain beyond imagining.

He shuddered convulsively against the cushions of the couch and asked himself, for the hundredth time, why he continued to love her so hopelessly in spite of everything. In a lifetime of rejection and abuse, no one had ever hurt him as intensely as the elfin soprano to whom he remained incapable of closing his heart; and he hated her as he had never hated anybody else.

And yet he could not release her. His love was not what it had been five years ago: the innocent joy and uncertainty of first love had been strangled and constrained by betrayal, self-hatred, and devastating loneliness: a pure red rose deformed and bent under the weight of bullying, bruising weeds. The purest emotion he had ever felt was now tainted with cynicism born of bitter experience; and, he realised as he pressed his face into the cushions of the couch, he was no longer young or naïve enough to foresee a happy ending for them.

She would go her way, and he would do as he always had: he would survive and endure.

The prospect of another twenty years without her was as bleak as a wilderness devastated by snow and ice; but better an empty white wasteland than the fiery hell of her presence.

Erik continued to lie motionless on the couch long after his heart had ceased hammering wildly in his ears, and when, some time later, Marguerite leapt lightly up to investigate his unusual inactivity, he accommodated her within his arms without opening his eyes.

What Erik had forgotten that night as he lay sleepless with heat burning behind his too-dry eyes was something that he recalled Giovanni having once told him.

"_It is always darkest before the dawn."_

Nadir was Christine's first port of call that afternoon: she arrived on his doorstep in tears, and found very little comfort in him. His initial concern, and the kindness that went with it, vanished as soon as Christine managed to sob her way through her story; and, furious, he sent her away directly, ignoring her pleas that he should carry a letter from her to Erik.

Nadir was almost less angry with Christine than himself. He could not suppress the feeling that this new manifestation of Christine's insatiable curiosity was his fault: he had been so sure that he was right in bringing her back into Erik's life! But old patterns of betrayal and insensitivity were emerging, and Nadir did not know whether his friend was strong enough to bear the blows of Christine's thoughtlessness again.

He was gathering his coat into his arms and preparing to go to his friend when he became aware of Darius's silent presence in the doorway.

"Tell me," he said.

Darius inclined his head, acknowledging the permission to speak. "There is comfort to be found in friendship and the concern of one who is a friend in times of sorrow."

Nadir, knowing that there was more to come, did not speak.

"But true solace comes only from discovering one's own strength. In being permitted to grieve without the constraint of a social visit." He paused. "The magician has always felt it a cause of shame to admit pain."

Nadir wondered, not for the first time, how his servant, who had never abandoned his instinctive distrust of Erik, could know him quite so well. He was right, of course: there was nothing Erik would hate more than to feel himself in receipt of his friend's pity. For many years now, Nadir had found it easier to pretend that he did not see the vulnerable heart concealed behind the Phantom of the Opera's polished façade; and only allowing Erik to hide the immediate tempest of grief could preserve that pretence.

"Tomorrow?" he asked.

Darius inclined his head once more. "I think that tomorrow he is more likely to find himself appreciative of company."

It was not without apprehension that Nadir approached Erik's flat the next day: for all the years that he had known his friend, Erik remained unpredictable and prone to unexpected displays of temper which never failed to unnerve him.

His anxiety seemed ill-founded, however: Erik opened the door to him with courtesy, if not enthusiasm, and went about the routine process of making tea without comment.

Nadir's first tentative comments about the weather and the treacherous journey the snow had provided were met with a polite lack of enthusiasm which lent him courage to broach the true purpose of his visit.

His mention of Christine's name brought the first sign of any other reaction than apathy from Erik: his eyes lit with warning fire which Nadir recognised instantly as dangerous, and he raised a hand abruptly to halt his friend.

"Since you have evidently been the recipient of a visit from my guest of yesterday, and have consequently already heard a relation of the result of her visit, you will forgive my not wishing to add my interpretation of events to hers." Bitterness faintly smeared his words. "No doubt she has told her tale admirably."

Erik put his teacup down roughly on the table, heedless of the delicate china, and rose to extinguish the samovar.

"If you have come here to encourage me to forgive her, you might be well advised to save your breath. I am not in humour to hear you extol her virtues."

Nadir shook his head, relieved that Erik did not seem angry. "I haven't come to list her merits. You know them yourself to the letter."

Erik laughed shortly and inclined his head in wry acknowledgment.

"But I would remind you of the good that has come about between you," Nadir continued. "I would ask you what it is that drives you to strike her from your life. Wounded pride is hardly –"

"Wounded pride!"

"– hardly reason enough to give her up," Nadir went on doggedly. "She really does regret it. And Erik –" he paused, wondering whether he dared continue. "– she is still very young. Young enough to be forgiven for her mistakes …"

Erik made an angry sound and gestured with violent dismissal.

"This is one mistake that she has made too many times." He crossed the room and lifted Marguerite into his arms, tracing delicate patterns on the soft fur of her head. "I can still hear her screaming, you know. When I close my eyes – when I try to sleep – _whenever_ there is silence … all I can hear is her screaming. Six years have passed since the first time she saw my face, and still I cannot forget … _blot out_ … the sound of that screaming." He was silent, and Nadir saw his brow crease into familiar lines of pain, his eyes closing. He dropped Marguerite abruptly, and spoke. "I am tired with discussing this." His tone brooked no argument.

"What am I to tell her?"

Erik glanced up and, for the first time, looked Nadir in the eyes. "You may tell her whatever you like." His voice wavered, so momentarily that Nadir was not even quite sure that he had really heard it. "It is a matter of supreme indifference to me."

Christine had never had a talent for taking advice. Nadir's advice that she should count her blessings and allow Erik to recuperate in his own time was no exception: desperate to make amends and regain Erik's good opinion, she returned several times to his flat to hammer with an ever-increasing sense of futility on the unyielding door and utter pleading supplications to its blank face. If Erik was there – and she did not doubt that he was – he did not reveal himself.

Had Christine turned back to gaze despairingly at the door like a pre-Raphaelite heroine from an unlikely novel, she might have seen the door open just a crack to allow a shadowed form to pass silently out of the flat and follow her at a discreet distance along the street.

Even in anger, Erik could not bring himself to suffer her to walk home alone.

He missed her fiercely in her absence. He had hoped that it might be easier to let her go this time, having spent so much time apart from her; but he soon discovered the pain just as fresh and the loneliness just as acute as when she had first left the Opera Populaire.

But in spite of the pain of being without her, he remained angry. It was an empty anger, one that left an aching hollow in his chest and consumed vast quantities of energy without providing light; but it was enough.

For the first time, he did not make excuses for her. He was accustomed to reason away her mistakes – her youth and inexperience had long spared her his wrath – but this time he did not. He simply could not understand her: no reason he could think of seemed sufficient to explain her willing infliction of the horror of his face upon herself; and in this utter incomprehension he found a knot of hard tightness to which he could cling in order to allow him to preserve his resentment.

The weakness that inevitably followed his illness plagued him over the next few weeks. Ordinarily, he could shake off the spells of fatigue and residual pain through sheer willpower, but now his strength seemed to have deserted him; and he began to feel his age as never before.

His physical condition was not aided by Nadir, who paid Erik countless tiring visits whose sole purpose seemed to be to raise the spectre of Christine in his friend's mind. At last Erik, exasperated and pained by constant subtle reminders of his former protégé, informed his only friend that until he could keep a judicious tongue in his head he would be wise to stay away, and Nadir resignedly capitulated, privately feeling that Erik's utter repression of everything he had ever felt for Christine could be no healthier than the violent expressions of that feeling which the Opera Populaire had suffered six years previously.

And so the time wore on: three long, lonely weeks in which Erik's cold façade masked bitter loneliness and crippling despair, and Christine, amid all of her friends, felt more alone than she had in years. Nadir, helpless between them, saw the growing sadness of each, and knew intense frustration at Erik's stubbornness which seemed destined to prevent them from finding happiness.

As the days wore on, he found that Christine was beginning to cling to him, visiting him daily; he suspected that the charm of his company stemmed mainly from the possibility he presented of discussion about Erik. Conversely, Erik was becoming withdrawn, aloof and unapproachable, unwelcoming when Nadir visited and, as time went on, frequently failing to answer the door at all. Christine found comfort in allowing Nadir's kindness to soothe her wounds; Erik in concealing his own entirely.

It was a cool day in early November when all of that changed.

Erik awoke out of the shallow, nervous sleep that provided his only rest these days to the sound of knocking at the door. At first he assumed his visitor was Nadir and rose unenthusiastically to let him in; but the voice that subsequently followed the knocks soon disabused him of that misapprehension and sent him shrinking back into a darker corner of the room.

"Erik, please! Please, please open the door and talk to me; I know you're in there!"

Christine pulled her hand back through her hair in mute frustration at the futility of the exercise and looked around with some ill-defined hope of a miracle.

"Erik … I'm going to put something through the letterbox. Will you read it?"

There was silence from within, but she almost thought she heard something that might have been movement towards the door. Christine sighed and took out the letter she had received earlier that morning, slipping it through the letterbox. She took a deep breath and waited.

Erik thought with a grimace that there was some obscene parody of their first days together in it: a mirror, a front door, there was really very little difference. One afforded him a sight of her which the other did not, of course …

The letter eased through the letterbox and fell soundlessly to the carpet like a falling leaf. He stared at it for a moment, paralysed; the thought came to him that he should throw it on the fire without opening it. _What value could further words of hers hold?_

He had resolved himself, and bent to pick it up; and as he did so, he realised that the name on the envelope was not his, but hers.

His brow furrowed, and his resolution dissolved. Frowning, he slipped his finger under the flap, noticing that it had already been opened, and withdrew the letter.

_Dear Madame la Vicomtesse,_

_Having discussed the matter with M. Firmin, and after your kind visit of last week, I am delighted to inform you that we would indeed be very happy to welcome you back to the Opera Populaire. Our next major production will be _La Boheme_, opening in September; rehearsals will begin in several weeks' time. _

There followed some six lines of nonsense about rehearsal and salary; he inferred from Andre's following words that she had requested that only a small part should be hers "_because of your long period of vocal inactivity_".

Erik could not have defined the moment in which his hand moved to open the door for Christine: all he knew was that as soon as the door gave way to her lovely face, his anger dissolved and his heart melted. It was inevitable that he should forgive her: however she might hurt him, he would never be able to stop loving her; his forgiveness was hers as surely as he himself was.

"Oh, Christine," he murmured. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears. "I wanted it to be a surprise," she whispered.

Erik saw Christine reach for her handkerchief, and was not surprised when she appeared unable to find it. He produced one and held it out to her. She accepted it, and they stood motionless for a moment, suspended in time, and then Christine gave a sob and crossed the distance between them in a rush. So suddenly that he was not quite sure how it had come about, she was in his arms, and she was sobbing against him, her face buried in his chest.

"Christine …"

Cautiously, he lifted one hand to stroke her hair, unable to summon sufficient courage to give in to the desire to return her embrace.

"Shh …" He stroked her hair back gently, smoothing his fingers across her curls. "It's all right."

Christine raised her tear-stained face to look him in the eyes, speaking fast, her voice still uneven with tears. "I'm sorry … I'm so sorry …" She dissolved into tears again and buried her face in his shirt.

Christine felt him shudder against her as she pressed closer into his arms, and was forcibly reminded of the day she had kissed him. His reaction had been markedly similar: the tremor of unexpected emotion succeeded by tension across the shoulders and hesitation as his arms came slowly around her. She closed her eyes as guilt poured through her: whether a kiss or something as simple as an embrace, physical contact always startled and discomfited him by virtue of its unfamiliarity; how could he bear such excruciating isolation?

She knew what he would say if she were to ask him.

"_It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear,"_ with the slight smile at the corner of his mouth that told her he expected her to recognise the quotation. She had always admired his stoicism, and frequently wondered how he could bear to endure her constant unreliability: she wished she could be as brave as he himself was.

And when he gently disentangled himself from her clutching embrace and guided her into the flat, one arm tentatively around her waist, she almost cried with relief as she sank into the guest armchair.

She gazed around at the room, which was far too tidy – Erik's usual confusion of sheet music and artwork entirely absent – and felt that she had come home after a long absence.

She saw him lean forward in his chair to speak, and pre-empted him.

"You must forgive me," she began earnestly, sweeping her hair back anxiously from her face. "I have missed you so … and the thought that you would not forgive me …" She stopped abruptly, at a loss. Her prepared speech had gone quite out of her head, and the single raised eyebrow that was her only indication of the expression on Erik's face did nothing but fluster her further.

"I'm so sorry. It was such a … _terrible_ thing of me to do … and … I just …" She shook her head. "I'm talking such nonsense. I wanted to know if I would still be …" her voice trailed off.

He finished the sentence for her. "Repulsed?"

She looked up into his eyes, startled, but there was no malice there. His eyes were sad; but kind. And again she was reminded of his dual natures; _how could someone so given to violence, so corrupted by evil be so kind to her, forgive such innumerable betrayals and countless disappointments?_

"Afraid."

He nodded slowly, and there was an aching silence.

"I am almost afraid to ask the result of this little experiment," he remarked at last with forced lightness.

Christine thought of that day, remembered her bare glimpse of Erik's face; and shook her head slowly.

"No," she replied softly. "No … I wasn't afraid."

The faintest flickering of doubt showed in his eyes; but he smiled the rather lopsided smile Christine recognised as forced, and only her desire to avoid distressing him further when he seemed willing to let the subject rest prevented her from pursuing it further as he stood and made the suggestion of tea.

This was the moment most easily defined as their reconciliation: from then on there were no recriminations and no anger between them. But inevitably their relationship was not what it had been: although Erik had forgiven her the injury, the wounds were longer in healing than he had anticipated. Christine could not help but notice his growing and undeniable paranoia about the mask: he kept that side of his face turned away from her as much as he could, and she could feel the tension that spread across his shoulders if she now stood beside him while he sat at the piano.

Christine wished she possessed the courage to ask him to take it off once and for all.

But this apart, they were soon comfortable together again: in company together, he was gentle and she was happy, and they came together with tender affection made all the more precious by the knowledge of its fragility.


	10. Chapter X

A/N – I think this has to be the shortest length of time in between updates from me in years: perhaps my muse decided that Siberia was too cold for her. This chapter is still padding though, really: I swear the good stuff is coming later – there is a plot buried somewhere under all the nonsense. Christine Persephone tells me E/C fluff is no longer a valuable commodity here at ff.n … I really hope that isn't true. Where have all the E/C shippers gone?

Lavendar: Christine as Mimi? Now, wherever would you get an idea like that from …? ;) We'll see! :P

Love and hugs to all who review; you make my day.

"I won't have it." Philippe strode across the room, his fist clenched around his brandy. His demeanour was rigid – his self-control never in doubt – but the whiteness of his face and the high spots of colour on his cheeks told St Cyr that he was struggling to hold back the urge to throw his glass of brandy across the room. "I will not have it. God knows she managed to soil the family's name sufficiently last time with all that business about the ghost; I'm damned if I'll let her drag his memory through the mud as she did his reputation while he was alive."

St Cyr rose silently and relieved Philippe of his glass.

"Don't you stand there in judgement on me!" Philippe snapped, frustrated by his friend's stoicism. "I'd like to see you stand there so bloody calm and reasonable if it were your sister-in-law making a public spectacle of herself!"

St Cyr took a sip from his own glass. "It's been six years, Philippe. She's been a model of decorum for that time; there has been no stain on Raoul's memory because of her behaviour."

"Until now!"

"It is … unorthodox. But this is an enlightened age, Philippe; and you know she will behave in a manner befitting her state."

Philippe shook his head stubbornly. "I won't have it. What would Raoul have said?"

"He first fell in love with her onstage. And … he would have wanted her to be happy. A woman needs occupation just as a man does."

"Then she should marry again. Why must she be so stubborn?" St Cyr did not reply, and Philippe drained his glass, his movements uncoordinated. "Why don't _you_ marry her, Armand?" he persisted with the irritable frustration of half-drunkenness, placing his glass rather too firmly on the side table.

St Cyr laughed sadly and took a sip of his cognac. "Ah, my friend," he sighed, gazing into the fire. "If only it were possible."

Philippe's temper was eased for the night, but all of St Cyr's reasoning and calming influence could not heal his friend's indignant fury that his brother's wife should think of resuming her former career. St Cyr shielded Christine as best he could from Philippe's wrath, minimising the situation by dismissing it with careless humour as an insignificance, but Christine was still stung and hurt by this latest evidence that, tolerate her as her brother-in-law had for Raoul's sake, he had never liked her.

Only Erik's ramrod support and the laconical amusement of St Cyr gave Christine the strength to withstand Philippe's rage. As it was, her return to the stage caused a minor sensation in the tabloid press, but after a few weeks of rehearsals, by which time the disappointed reporters had largely given up their hopes of stories of atrocious behaviour or tawdry love affairs, Christine was allowed to settle back into the routine of life at the Opéra with surprisingly little fuss.

As the opening night of _La Bohéme_ approached, however, Christine's nerves began to get the better of her.

"I can't do it," she said abruptly as Erik opened the door to her one crisp December day less than two weeks before the first performance. She strode into the flat and began to pace up and down with a nervous energy that amused Erik.

"I can't do it, do you hear me?"

Erik silently took her cloak, a faint smile playing about his lips.

"Don't laugh at me, Erik!" She began to pace again, a lock of her hair coming loose and falling into her eyes. "I'm _twenty-six_, do you hear me? I haven't sung in front of an audience for _six years_." She swept her hair out of her eyes with a feverish gesture of nervousness and continued. "My voice is horribly out of condition, and if I don't make myself ill with nerves before opening night I'll probably faint onstage and …"

She paused, rather out of breath and feeling somewhat at a loss, disconcerted by Erik's silence. Having run out of steam for individual panics, she reverted to easier expostulations. "I just can't do it."

Erik did not comment.

"Well, aren't you going to say anything?" she asked at last, frustrated.

Erik gestured towards her chair and, when she shook her head roughly in dissent, sat down with languid grace in his own.

"Which of those assertions would you like me to dismiss first, then?" he asked. "I assume that's why you've come to me. Shall we start with your age? You are, it is very true, twenty-six years old. I might remind you that the Opéra's current lead soprano is almost exactly three months older than you." He paused, offering her an opportunity for comment, and, when she did not avail herself of it, continued. "You have not sung in front of an audience for six years; again, true. You have, however, been singing for me for at least the last – what is it now? nine months? – and I guarantee I am a more exacting and critical audience than any you will find in your opening night crowd at the Opera Populaire. I will pass over the insult to my teaching implicit in the suggestion that your voice is out of condition and settle for assuring you that it is not; and finally, think of the headlines if you were to faint onstage in the middle of the first performance."

Christine nodded breathlessly, taken aback, and he smiled gently, abandoning irony.

"Tell me what prompted this attack of stage fright."

Christine shuffled in her seat and looked down at her toes. All the nervous energy of only a moment ago seemed to have drained out of her, and she suddenly looked very young indeed.

"I've never …" She stopped.

"Go on." His voice was soft and very kind, and she was encouraged.

"I've never performed without you," she said at last. "_Never_. Always, when I was at the Opera before, you were there to watch … and it made me feel braver to know you were with me. And now, performing without you there for the first time … I'm scared." She blushed and lowered her eyes. "I know it's silly."

Erik was silent for a very long time, and when Christine looked up, embarrassed, into his face, she saw a smear of heightened colour across his face.

"It's not silly," he said, very softly. "Not at all."

All his wry humour had vanished; he now appeared utterly sincere.

There was a brief pause, in which Christine felt relief ease through her. At last he spoke.

"How could you think I would not be there?"

She looked up, startled. "But … you haven't lived there for years."

He smiled tightly. "There _are_ other ways of procuring a seat at the Opéra than extortion, my dear," he informed her ironically, moving to stand by the piano. "For once, I have resorted to the legitimate purchase of a seat."

Christine's uncertainty vanished; her eyes lit up. "Are you – I mean … oh, thank you!"

And before Erik could stop her, she had leapt up and flung her arms around his neck like a small child overjoyed with a beloved parent's gift. Erik, unprepared for her sudden weight, took a step back, steadying her with a hand on her waist.

"I'm so glad … you've made me feel so much –" She looked up into his eyes, and stopped abruptly, awkward embarrassment suddenly replacing her smile as she registered the expression in his eyes and his hand at her waist.

"… better," she finished awkwardly, stepping quickly backwards and stumbling on her skirts. Erik put out a hand to steady her, and she waved it away with a quick gesture of embarrassment. She looked up, her face scarlet, and gave Erik a flushing, embarrassed smile. He was standing quite still, and only the faintest staining of colour around his visible cheekbone betrayed any agitation.

"So," Erik cleared his throat, and a rather forced smile formed on his lips. "Has that cured you of your stage fright?"

Christine laughed, still a little flustered, and sat down, folding her ankles beneath her skirts like a small child.

"Yes … thank you."

Erik smiled and seated himself at the piano.

"You are very welcome. Now … what are you going to sing for me?"

The first night of _La Boheme_ was not an unqualified success. Knowing that Erik was in the audience, Christine was comforted, and her nerves did not undermine her performance; but the lead soprano, an English beauty named Angela, having learned the week before of the sudden and unexpected death of a sister, was still shaken and delivered a performance which was, albeit brave, decidedly undistinguished. The critics were kind, but their praise was muted, and the production was not expected to last.

Erik endured the intense discomfort of being among so many people again sustained only by the promise of Christine's company at the end of the night, and sat through the performance fighting not to betray the unbearable frustration he felt as the unfortunate Angela stumbled through her scenes. Had Christine only been a little more confident, the part might have been hers; and although Angela's voice was not unpleasant, he knew that Christine would have been better.

By the end of the performance, he was simmering with irritation, and was forced to make a conscious effort to calm himself before Christine hurried out of the stage door, muffled in a thick cloak against the cold.

He was generous in praise of her, but conspicuously silent on the subject of poor Angela; and Christine, feeling vaguely guilty without quite understanding the cause, almost wished that she had asked to be considered for a larger part.

He took her for dinner at a small, quiet restaurant with snowy linen and crystal glinting diamonds in the muted candlelight, the faint chink of cutlery against china and soft conversation providing a soothing background. After leaving the restaurant, they wandered with seeming aimlessness into a wooded park, and it was not until it began to snow, tiny soft flakes drifting tenderly down from the midnight-blue sky, that they retreated to Erik's flat.

As Christine crossed the threshold of Erik's flat, bending to acknowledge Marguerite's hysterical greeting, she realised that it had been years since she had been so happy. Late-night dinners and moonlit walks had always been a central part of their routine when she had first performed at the Opera Populaire: regardless of the countless other offers she might receive, Erik would always arrive at her dressing room and take her down to his house on the lake; the disastrous performance of _Il Muto_ and, of course, Erik's ill-dated _Don Juan Triumphant_, were the only two occasions she could recall when she had not spent the night of a performance in the beautiful pink room Erik had prepared for her in his house.

Once safely inside Erik's flat – smaller and yet so similar in feeling to the house on the lake – and having calmed Marguerite, who remained so obsessively protective of Erik that prolonged periods of absence on his part had a tendency to induce hysteria upon his return, they sat, and Christine closed her eyes, relaxing into the softness of her armchair. She opened her eyes at the sound of Erik's voice.

"Here."

He offered her a glass of red wine, and seated himself in the armchair opposite, taking a sip from his own glass. There came a decisive meow, and Marguerite leapt up to curl possessively in his lap. Erik smiled and passed a hand gently along the soft fur of her back, and Christine began to laugh. Something about Erik's cat's single-minded devotion to her master struck her as extremely funny; he appeared so sublimely normal, sitting in an armchair with a cat on his knee.

Erik smiled and rolled his eyes in eloquent irony. "Ridiculous animal." Christine began to laugh even harder.

As the night wore on, Erik found his mood changing subtly: ever since the end of the performance, he had silently rejoiced in her company, thrilling in having her so near; he could not remember the last time he had been so happy.

But as time slipped away, a shade of wistfulness began to creep into his happiness: she was near enough to touch and just too far away for him to dare. She was laughing and unendurably beautiful. To give himself something to do with his hands to prevent himself from reaching out to touch her hand or stroke her hair, he kept refilling her glass; and it was late at night before he realised that she might have had a little too much to drink.

It had not occurred to Erik, on whom alcohol rarely had any effect, that Christine might not be of his body type; and although he at first interpreted her noisy gleefulness as a rather extreme reaction to the thrill of returning to performance, he slowly began to realise as she became more and more pliant across the table that the alcohol might be affecting her adversely.

Everything would have been all right, of course, had her state of giddy excitement endured. But as it was, it did not.

It was some time after midnight when her joyful exuberance began to fade into subdued melancholy.

"Raoul always used to say red wine made him feel guilty," she murmured, staring into the crimson depths of her glass. "It made him think of communion …"

Erik sat quite still, stricken. By unspoken agreement, they did not speak of Raoul between themselves: the memories reference to Christine's husband invariably brought were painful for both. Erik knew she still thought of him, of course – after all, they had been married for the better part of a year – but he was still unprepared for the rush of pain that hearing her speak of him brought.

To stave off his own unexpected reaction, he rose and refilled his own glass. When he turned back to Christine, he felt a resigned shock of depression as he realised she had begun to cry, and that he could no longer stall the inevitable conversation. He resumed his seat opposite her, and waited for her to speak.

"I miss him," she whispered at last.

Erik turned his head away. "I know," he said, almost inaudibly.

"It's … the little things," she began tearfully. "When I wake in the night, he isn't there. And it still comes as a shock, however many times …" she broke off, tears choking her. "And … and coming home and being alone … all the time …"

Erik stood up abruptly, feeling sick. He, of course, was used to waking to an empty house in the night; and he knew far better than Christine what it was to be terminally alone.

"Don't go," she wept.

And he did not.

They sat together throughout the night, Christine talking rapidly, tripping over her words as grief and alcohol combined to rob her of her coordination and reserve. And when, in the early hours of the morning, she finally sank, exhausted, into his arms, Erik experienced an emotion utterly removed from the consuming, scorching torment he was so accustomed to associate with her. For once, all he wanted was to comfort her; to see her eyes shine with laughter again rather than the false diamonds of tears. He let her cry herself out on his shoulder, and, as his hand stroked her hair, smoothed the soft tangles back from her face – lovely even in grief – he could almost believe that one day this would be enough. Enough to hear her sing, see her smile, feel the room light with her laughter; one day, one day he would teach himself that this could suffice.


	11. Chapter XI

A/N – For all those of you who wanted to see Christine's hangover … voila.

Thank you to all who have reviewed, both this and the other stories I have on the go at the moment; you make my day. :)

The song used later in the chapter is, of course, _You'll Never Walk Alone_, from the beautiful _Carousel_ (or, if you prefer, the theme song for Arsenal. Whatever.)

Erik sat perfectly still, barely seeming to breathe. Christine was still lying in his arms, her hair covering her face. She seemed to have fallen asleep, and he did not dare to move in case he should wake her.

All he wanted to do was to crawl away into the dark and hide himself: it was the most uniquely painful torture to sit so still, feeling her in his arms, unable to move lest she should wake and begin to cry again.

Christine came awake slowly, groggily as he eased her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom. A pernicious idea, of course, but there was nowhere else for her to sleep and the thought of enduring her sweet weight in his arms all night was too terrifyingly exquisite to be seriously entertained.

"Where are we going?" she murmured groggily, half-raising her head to look around.

He ignored the question and opened the door to his bedroom, shouldering his way in to avoid disturbing her.

He deposited her gently on the bed and retreated to the kitchen, returning moments later with a jug of water and a glass. She was sitting upright on the bed, staring vacantly down at her hands, toying with the tassels which hung from the thick bedspread; and when he held out the glass of water, she took hold of his hand, holding it between both of hers.

"Your hands are cold," she murmured contemplatively, lacing her fingers through his.

He abruptly withdrew his hand. "I know that. I'm sorry." He pressed the water into her hand. "Now, here – drink this."

She blinked at him. "Why?"

"Because if you don't, you will feel even more staggeringly awful tomorrow morning than you will if you do."

"Oh." Erik did not for a minute imagine that she understood, but she took the water and drank obediently, making little slurping noises against the side of the glass. When she had finished, she kept the glass in her hands, rolling it between her palms. A drop of water detached itself from the glass's smooth surface and fell onto the bed. Erik relieved her of the glass, and she continued to sit still, staring at her hands.

"Do you think I'll ever see him again?" she asked at last, without looking up.

Erik looked sharply at her. She looked very small, her hair hanging down to partially obscure her face. He paused, considering his answer. "You are a Catholic," he replied at last. "Of course you will."

"You don't believe in God," she mumbled with curious lucidity.

His reply was gentle. "You do."

She was silent for a long time, and Erik drew back the eiderdown on the bed.

"Lie down," he instructed. "It's time for bed."

She did so, climbing beneath the covers like a little girl waiting to be tucked in. He drew the blankets up over her and smoothed her hair on the pillow.

"Good night," he murmured gently, turning to leave the room.

Her voice called him back. "Erik!" She sounded drowsy and still less-than-lucid. "Stay with me?"

He turned back to her and knelt on the floor beside the bed. "No, my dear," he whispered. "I want you to go to sleep."

Her hand caught at his, and would not let him leave. "I'm afraid of the dark."

Erik sighed. "I know you are."

"Sing to me." Her fingers absently stroked the palm of his hand, and he fought the urge to kiss them. "The way you used to."

"Very well." He thought for a moment, drawing the blanket up to cover her shoulders again.

"_When you walk through a storm,_

_Hold your head up high,_

_And don't be afraid of the dark._

_At the end of the storm is a golden sky_

_And the sweet silver song of a lark._

_Walk on through the wind,_

_Walk on through the rain_

_Though your dreams be tossed and blown._

_Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart_

_And you'll never walk alone._

_You'll never walk alone."_

Christine's eyes were closed, and her breathing was even, indicating sleep. Gently, cautiously, Erik withdrew his fingers from hers, and laid her hand carefully beside her on the bed. He remained kneeling by her bedside for a moment longer, watching her sleep; the tracks of recent tears still showed on her cheeks, but she looked peaceful, her face relaxed in slumber.

He looked down at the crown of her head, thick chestnut hair tousled in glorious curls around her delicate shoulders, and closed his eyes, his heart burning. Gently, he touched the softness of her hair spread over the pillow; and, temptation becoming too strong, stroked back a few errant strands from her forehead. She did not stir.

Erik stood, and bent over her sleeping form. Very lightly – just once – he pressed his lips to her forehead.

"Sweet dreams," he whispered.

He left the room, closing the door behind himself, and seated himself in the warm depths of his armchair, the dying fire casting flickering shadows over the room.

He took up his book from the side table and opened it; but it took him less than five minutes to cast aside the book and lean forward to stare into the dying glow of the fire and think.

Christine awoke slowly the next morning, feeling tired and drained. She opened her eyes slowly, and winced. She raised a hand to her head, which was throbbing mercilessly, and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping the pain would recede.

It did not.

Christine lay back on the pillow, her eyes closed against the pain in her head and the fractured light filtering through the gaps in the curtains, trying to remember the night before. She felt vaguely depressed, and could not quite remember why; her mouth tasted foul and she desperately wanted a drink of water. She was aware of feeling heavy, and realised she was still wearing last night's dress; she plucked weakly at the material, feeling unclean.

She remembered the performance; that indescribable thrill of performing again – poor Angela – the hushed excitement and barely-contained chaos of backstage that she had half-forgotten in her long absence; she remembered Erik taking her out for dinner …

A sudden, unexpected wave of nausea swept over her.

She remembered the journey back to his flat; the expensive label on a bottle of wine, half-turned away from her.

Consciousness was returning slowly to her, in fits and starts, and with the realisation that she still wore last night's dress came the horrified shock that she was not in her own bed. She sat up abruptly, and immediately bent forwards, burying her face in the soft blanket in a vain effort to quell the pain in her head and the nausea movement appeared to induce. Gradually, the feeling of sickness receded, and she raised her face to the cracks of light appearing where the curtains met.

The room she had been sleeping in was expensively but subtly furnished with mahogany furniture and thick curtains and carpet. The papers on the bedside table, covered with elegant, precise music notation, should have given her sufficient warning of the inevitable conclusion; but in her still-fuddled state, it was the lingering scent of candle wax and sandalwood that gave Christine to know that she must have spent the night in Erik's own bedroom.

Christine drew the blanket around her like a small child, deriving comfort from its softness and unmistakable smell of Erik.

"What happened last night?" she asked herself aloud, immediately regretting it as the sound reverberated through her head.

Erik looked up from his book to see Christine emerge from the room in which she had spent the night, her hair tangled and her eyes heavy with sleep. She looked confused and tired, blinking owlishly as she came into the sunlight, raising one hand to her head as if to ward off its brightness.

"Good morning."

Her eyes came slowly to rest on him. "I don't feel well," she mumbled.

"No," he agreed. He poured her a glass of water from a jug on the table, and she accepted it obediently, drinking it greedily.

"Thank you," she mumbled, and came unsteadily to sit in her chair.

In his youth, Erik had occasionally resorted to alcohol in a final effort to forget, and knew well what Christine was feeling. He had considered making himself absent for the morning to spare her the embarrassment of having to face him before she had recovered herself; but on reflection had decided that her fear on finding herself left alone would probably outweigh her self-consciousness.

Christine drew her feet up under her, this unreserve a sign of her still-confused mind, and stared down into her glass.

"Why do I feel so ill?" she asked in a little voice. Erik was momentarily gratified that she should still look to him as the ultimate authority on any question to which she did not know the answer, and rose to refill her glass with water.

Gently, he explained; and she nodded weakly.

"Reeves will be worried about me," she mumbled.

Erik shook his head. "He has received a message that you stayed with a friend from the Opéra. He will, however, be expecting you back this morning; and so I think perhaps you might consider preparing yourself." He glanced at the clock. "The hour grows late."

Christine looked down at her hands through bleary eyes, feeling faintly depressed. She wanted to stay; to crawl back into that soft bed with its thick blankets and comfortingly familiar scent of Erik and close her eyes. But – still confused, and her head aching – she could not find the words to articulate that desire. Therefore, she nodded, and rose clumsily to her feet.

Even in her heavy, bemused state, she found momentary pleasure in the fact that Erik reached out to steady her as she stumbled.

Erik spoke very little on the journey back to Christine's house. He had been supremely kind to her all morning, solicitously offering her water and anything else she might possibly want; but somehow he seemed distant, and through the haze of her clouded memory of the night before, Christine wished she could remember exactly what she had said and done.

As they drew close to her house, however, she screwed up her courage, and addressed him.

"Erik."

He had been gazing out of the window, watching Paris pass by, but at the sound of her voice, he looked towards her.

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

He raised one eyebrow, and she stumbled on, wishing she did not feel so dull and stupid.

"You were, I think, very kind to me last night." He made a dismissive gesture, his glance drifting towards the window again, and she reached out towards him, desperate to hold his attention. As her hand made contact with his arm, he looked back to her, startled, and she sensed from his instant tension that only an earnest desire not to offend her prevented him from drawing his arm away.

"You were kind to me last night; as you have been kind to me for goodness only knows how many months now." She laughed self-consciously. "Sometimes I wonder how I would cope without you."

Christine felt the carriage come to a stop, and realised that they had arrived at her house. She could feel Erik's eyes on her, his expression unreadable, and she laughed uncomfortably.

"I had better go and face Reeves."

Erik opened the carriage door and sprang down with his own peculiar grace to help her out. She accepted his hand to help her down; but as she turned to go towards the house, embarrassed now, she felt his hand tighten around her own.

"Christine."

She looked back at him at once. With a rapid movement that spoke of swiftly-formed resolution tainted yet with uncertainty, he brought her hand to his lips.

"It has been a pleasure."

He released her hand abruptly, and for a moment she simply stared at him, astonished by this unprecedented display of affection. Never had he initiated contact of this sort before; and never before had she felt so strong a desire to fall into his arms.

Shaking off this strange and unfamiliar emotion, she took a step backwards towards the safety of her house.

"Thank you," she whispered, and, turning, hurried up the path to the house, where Reeves waited to open the door.

That evening, Christine sat in the music room, holding her needlework in her lap. She had long since abandoned the intricate embroidery, her thoughts too distracted for a task requiring such a degree of concentration, and was instead staring into the fire, thinking.

She was roused from her reverie by the sound of a knock on the door. Reeves entered.

"The Marquis de St Cyr," he declared portentously.

Christine rose as St Cyr entered the room, almost glad of the distraction from her thoughts, which had all day been spiralling through endless revolutions of confusion.

"You were beautiful last night," he told her, leaning in to kiss her as the door closed quietly behind Reeves' departing form. "I came to see you afterwards, but they told me you'd already left." Christine managed a weak smile, and gestured for him to sit. He did so; but rose again almost immediately, and began to pace the room.

"The truth of the matter is," he went on, "that there was something I wanted to ask you."

Christine took a sip of water and nodded. "Yes?"

St Cyr looked her in the face, his brow suddenly crinkling with apprehension. He came towards her and took her hand; and, to Christine's utmost astonishment, knelt down before her.

"I wanted to ask you …" He paused, and then continued in a rush, "I wanted to ask you if you would marry me."

Christine's mind reeled.

"Armand …"

"No," he interrupted her feverishly. "Don't say anything just yet. I know you're thinking of Raoul – he knew all about it, I assure you. I waited – I thought that if I waited long enough, I would forget you, or be able to find someone else …" He shook his head distractedly, releasing her hand to pass his own through his hair. "But I couldn't. Every woman I met –" he laughed roughly, "– and goodness knows my sisters were desperate to ensure I met every one who was even vaguely eligible – was nothing. Incomparable." He stopped and looked into her eyes. "I loved you while he was alive, and now six years have passed and still I can think of nothing but you."

Christine stared at her husband's best friend. Her silence seemed to unnerve him, and he stood up hastily. "Of course I don't expect an answer now," he said hurriedly. "I will leave you now … and if you don't want me to come again, of course I shall understand."

He kissed her hand quickly, and hurried out of the room; Christine heard him pass a few rushed words with Reeves in the corridor, and then the sound of the front door closing. A female voice – one of the younger servants, perhaps – asked "Why was he in such a hurry?" and Reeves shushed her curtly, sending her away.

Christine passed a trembling hand through her hair, feeling weak. She laughed tremulously, hysteria and astonishment battling for supremacy.

"What would Raoul say?" she asked herself aloud, and knew the answer as soon as the question had left her lips. Raoul was not a selfish man: he would have wanted her to be happy. He would have been glad to bestow her hand upon a man whom he himself esteemed so highly. Why, then, did she feel such a strange aversion to the idea? St Cyr was her friend: she liked him, respected him. He was a kind man – she could never forget how tenderly and compassionately he had soothed her pain after Raoul's death – and he would love her perfectly and care for her as well as Raoul could ever have wished.

But she did not want to marry him. No, she acknowledged to herself as she pictured his kind face before her eyes, she did not want to marry him.

_Why not?_

And then suddenly, coming upon her with a suddenness that sent her sinking back into her chair, was a memory that she had thought locked away forever.

"_I love you."_

A wave of emotion crashed over her: she covered her face with her hands.

"God forgive me," she whispered brokenly. Only once had he spoken that way to her: he had been always kind, always steady, but only once had he spoken of love; and, frightened by the unfamiliarity of the feelings inside her, she had run away. St Cyr kissed her frequently, on the cheek or on the hand, and yet his touch had never inspired the terrifying jolt of her heart that the barest brush of Erik's cold fingers could produce.

"Is that why?" Her voice sounded small in the enormous room; the expensive furnishings and soft drapes seemed to swallow her words in cushioning opulence. "Because of –"

She covered her mouth with her hands. She could not finish the thought. Desperately, she looked to the mantelpiece, to the framed portrait of Raoul that stood there.

"Forgive me," she whispered. "Forgive me."

She buried her face in her hands, and tears soaked through her fingers.


	12. Chapter XII

A/N – And Meg makes an appearance. Hurrah!

For Christine Persephone, just because I'm so honoured to be in receipt of the Sarah Brightman Happy Puppy Dance; and for Steph for helping me brainstorm. This chapter is at least half her fault; and, hence, she deserves half of any credit that may be going.

And Steph – get that Raoul-loving demon back inside you! Repeat after me: Jim Weitzer … Matt Cammelle … Chris Carl … Steve Barton … Oliver Thornton … (joking! Joking … I swear. How do you fancy him as Walter Hartright?)

Much love to everyone who's reviewed – I've absolutely loved writing this story, and I'm so inspired and made happy by all your reviews – love you all.

Christine gave St Cyr her answer the next day. Confused as her feelings were about Erik, she was certain that she could never marry the man who had sacrificed so much to protect her after the death of his best friend; and her heart shrank from the thought of keeping him in the cruel torture of suspense while she sorted through her tangled feelings for her music teacher.

"Breeding will out," the wives of Raoul's friends had been wont to remark in pointedly loud voices as Christine tried to shrink into a corner to escape their notice; and never had Christine been so aware of the truth in those biting words as that day. The barest moment in which unguarded pain stamped itself across St Cyr's handsome features was all he allowed himself: he concealed his disappointment beneath a well-practised façade of good-humour, and sought to assuage Christine's guilt as best he could by minimising the situation.

But in spite of all his declarations that of course they would still be friends, as Christine looked upon his fixed smile as he waved her into her hansom, she knew that their friendship had changed, and would never be quite the same again.

However, as the days wore on, her thoughts did not resolve themselves. She was aware that she felt different towards Erik: when they were together, she felt awkward, and sought to please him as best she could; then she felt foolish and withdrew her earnest efforts in case he should notice the change in her. She felt angry with herself: her behaviour was utterly irrational, and she knew it; and yet she could not shake off the feeling that something had changed between them. The change was not in him – he was as kind and yet frustratingly reserved as ever – and so it must be in her. But quite what that change was, she could not fathom; nor could she understand why her skin tingled whenever he stood near her, or why she could not keep herself from stealing guilty glances at him as they sat in his warm music room, he reading or writing, his face a study in concentration lit by the flickering of the firelight.

It was one such night, late in the evening, that they sat inside, the steady drumming of the rain against the roof a soothing background to the scene of quiet domesticity within.

Erik had spent much of the evening working, scrawling music across sheet after sheet of flawless cream paper with feverish urgency, and as the hour grew late, he gradually relaxed. At last, with a sigh, he laid down his pen and sat back in his chair to survey his work. Christine, watching him surreptitiously from beneath the cover of her book, suppressed a smile as he registered the disarray of paper spread over the desk with a frown, half of bemusement, half of dismay. It amused her to observe how absorbed he could become in his work; and it worried her not a little less that she had quite shamelessly taken advantage of that fact to spend almost the entire evening watching him.

She hastily looked back down at her book as he glanced over to her, feeling herself blush like a small child guiltily caught distracting a working parent.

She heard him rise, evidently abandoning the mess of papers strewn over the desk and floor as a bad job, and pad softly across the room towards her.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

Christine, who had in fact not read more than a paragraph since taking up the book several hours earlier, was disconcerted by the question and embarrassed not to know the answer. Instead of replying, she offered him the book to look at himself, hoping against hope that he would not notice the fiery blush that seemed to increase proportionally as she willed it to subside.

Appearing not to notice her heightened colour, Erik accepted the book and inspected the cover.

"_Wuthering Heights_," he remarked approvingly, handing it back to her. "An appropriate book for a night like tonight." He gestured towards the window, where a flash of lightning had just illuminated the driving rain still beating against the window. "Have you noticed that every mother in the novel dies in childbirth, just as Emily's did?" He gave the familiar little half-smile that always came out as lopsided because of the constant placidity of the mask, and crossed the room to look out of the window into the rain. "A question of how our own experiences influence our art."

Christine found herself smiling. Erik would frequently offer small facts relevant to the minutiae of her life to her, and with his instinctive understanding of what would interest her, she never failed to be captivated by his capacity to impart knowledge.

"I fear I have wasted your day," he said at last, turning from the window. "We have hardly time for a singing lesson now."

Christine swallowed the protest that rose instinctively to her lips that time spent with him was never wasted, and instead suggested that he might play for her. "To make the day not entirely devoid of music," she added, her eyes sparkling.

In spite of the fact that he must be tired from his long hours of composition, Erik acquiesced at once and seated himself at the piano, thumbing through scores.

"What would you like to hear?" he inquired, and an idea struck Christine.

"Why don't you play for me on your violin again?" she suggested. "I haven't heard you play it in so long."

He hesitated, and she saw doubt in his eyes.

"I mean … not if you'd rather not," she stammered, not quite understanding why he should not wish to, and yet sensing that she had unthinkingly touched a nerve deep inside him.

He shook his head. Inwardly, he was in turmoil: it had been so long since he had played his violin. To play it for her again would strip away his final remaining protection against her, and with it the lingering pretence that he could live without her. He was not even sure he could remember _how_ to play …

… but as he moved mechanically to withdraw the case from the wardrobe in which he had stored it, and his fingers did not stumble on the catches, it all came pouring back to him, and as he lifted his most beloved instrument into his hands, he could suddenly remember how he had felt all those years ago. The joy of absolute adoration yet untainted by the forbidden fruit of the terrible knowledge that would destroy them both. Unaware that Christine was watching his changing demeanour with something between alarm and curiosity, he winced as a rush of pain swept through him as he once again saw her face, contorted with fear; heard her screams echo through the cavernous cellars.

Slowly, he lifted the violin beneath his chin, and tested the sound. Across the room, Christine sat mesmerised as he adjusted the tuning pegs, perfecting the sound. At last, he drew the bow across the strings, and Christine shut her eyes as the air rang with music that was suddenly alive. Lament and joy swept through her, leaving her shaking with the force of its onslaught, and she found herself weeping.

At last, the music ceased, only the whispering breath of the last notes dropping, pearl-like, into still water remaining. Christine opened her eyes and looked at Erik: he was sitting so still he might have been carved from marble. His eyes were closed; even as she watched, a single tear escaped from his closed eyelids and slid down the cool surface of the mask.

"Erik," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. Unthinkingly, she stretched her hand out to him, wanting desperately to feel him kiss her fingers again, to feel his cold touch burn against her skin.

As soon as her hand connected with his, his eyes snapped open; he rose to his feet with a startled movement. One hand rose to his face, touching the mask and instantly withdrawing. He seemed utterly startled, as though he had been awakened from a deep sleep without warning.

"Forgive me …"

He took a step backwards without seeming to realise the motion. His hand went again to his mask, and Christine stood, nervous.

It had been so many years since she had heard him play his violin, and Christine was startled and more than a little frightened by the difference in her own reaction. Although she had felt the familiar rush of emotional admiration of his transcendent talent, the emotion was now different somehow … and that ineffably fierce desire to feel him take her into his arms was definitely unfamiliar.

Christine touched her fingers to her throat, feeling her face burning.

Erik's voice reached her, just a little unsteady. "I think that perhaps I am rather too out of practice to offer you a tolerable performance," he said, replacing the violin swiftly in its case and closing the lid with a sound of finality.

He retreated to the piano, and the rest of the evening passed off in tolerable calm as he played deliberately light songs for her.

But even as she laughed at a ludicrous song about a tree-dwelling frog, Christine was in turmoil. Somehow her feelings had changed in a way she had never dreamed possible: and she could not imagine how she was ever to tell him.

It was a Wednesday several weeks later that Erik was to be found making his way through one of his network of secret passages in the Opéra Populaire to the Rue Scribe. On account of Christine's schedule, which was becoming increasingly busy with extra rehearsals, they would occasionally have their lessons in the Opéra itself to save Christine the time wasted travelling to and from Erik's flat. He was thinking with satisfaction about that day's lesson, in which he had finally persuaded Christine to begin work on Mimi's part of the score – only for a vocal challenge, of course – when his attention was caught by the sound of excited chatter coming from the corridor.

"Mary said Nicole had news."

"About Christine!"

His attention caught in spite of himself, Erik hesitated. The squeak of laughter that issued from one of the small girls' throats made up his mind for him, and with lithe speed born of long familiarity with the Opéra's extensive network of secret passages, largely constructed by himself, he followed the girls to the ballet _corps_ dormitories.

He arrived just after the two girls he had observed in the passage had squeezed their way into the huddle of ballerinas that had formed around a tall girl with dark hair whom he recognised as a dancer from years ago. He combed his memory for her name, but only a small blonde ballerina's plea of "Oh, _please_, Nicole!" finally gave him to remember her fully.

The other girls crowded even closer.

"What is it?"

"It's the Marquis!" Nicole looked around, bursting with self-importance and excitement, and, lowering her voice to a stage whisper, concluded, "He's asked her to marry him!"

Erik reached blindly for the wall, suddenly unsure of his feet. The _corps_ gave a collective gasp, which rapidly dissolved into equally collective squeaking and shrill shrieks of excitement.

"She won't marry him." The girls all turned to see where the voice had come from. Little Meg Giry was sitting curled up on her bed with a book, having until then taken no part in the conversation. "Whether he's asked her or not –" pre-empting her friends' request, she held up a slim hand "– and no, I won't tell you whether he has, because it's frankly none of your _business_ – she won't marry him. So I suggest you don't go spreading that rubbish about." This last was delivered with a hard stare at Nicole, who flushed.

"Well, why shouldn't she?" she demanded defiantly. "How do you know she won't?"

Meg laid her book down on her bedside table. "Because her singing teacher would never stand for it," she said simply, and Erik felt the room grow distant as the ground shivered beneath his feet. "She will never marry while she's still under his tuition. He is extremely strict and she wouldn't upset him for the world."

"But the Marquis is so _handsome_!" protested little Robyn.

"And rich," murmured Anna, slightly better versed in the ways of the world.

"Well-connected," added Mary. She and Anna exchanged knowing, slightly pitying glances for Robyn's romantic sensibilities.

"And doubtless it would be the best thing in the world for her to marry him," concluded Meg. She took up her book again, a clear sign that she did not intend to participate in the conversation any longer. "Nevertheless, she won't, and there's an end to it." She opened her book, and proceeded to ignore the barrage of protest that ensued from her friends.

At precisely that moment, Christine was sitting on her own bed at home, in much the same attitude as Meg. She too held a book – the long-neglected _Wuthering Heights_ – and was, regrettably, doing no more justice to it than she had the last time she had taken it up at Erik's flat.

She was, instead, staring at the opposite wall, patterned with a particularly dull floral motif she was always meaning to have changed; but today, its banality suited her. It did not draw her attention away from her thoughts, which had of late been so convolutedly tangled that allowing herself too much time to focus on them inevitably resulted in a headache.

She would have liked to be able to claim that her thoughts were largely concerned with St Cyr and how best to help him through the pain she had caused him. She was ashamed to admit that she had hardly thought of him once except with fleeting guilt for the very fact that she thought of him so little.

One man alone occupied her mind; and it seemed absurd to her that she should spend so much time wondering about his own closely-guarded feelings when he had expended so many years in loving her.

Christine dropped her book on the floor in an expression of frustration. If only she were sure! She had spent days analysing his behaviour, worrying every gesture he made and every word he spoke from every angle she could possibly think of until nothing seemed certain.

She felt he must love her: his kindness, his careful attention to her every move and wish, the very fact that he continued willing to tutor her after all they had been through! all translated to her belief that the feelings he had entertained for her seven years ago had not faded into a memory.

But if she were wrong … and he was certainly entitled to hate her after everything that had happened between them. He did not hate her, she was sure – felt – was almost certain – but as Christine knew from bitter experience, there was a world of difference between the treasuring of a friendship and the romantic attachment she had come to long for.

But whether he could find it in himself to reciprocate her feelings or not, Christine knew she could not hold the secret much longer. Every time she was near him, she longed to reach out and touch him, and did not dare; she knew that one day soon her self-control – so inferior to his own! – would desert her and she would open herself utterly artlessly to the possibility of rejection.

And rejection, she felt, she could not bear.

Better, surely, she reasoned, to broach the subject herself, consciously, with prepared words, than to allow herself to drive him away with clumsy, ill-prepared declarations of feelings unwelcome to him?

Christine looked down at the book which had landed open on the floor, and the picture on the centrefold – a delicate line drawing of Cathy and Heathcliff standing just apart from each other – settled her mind.

She was due to see him the next day for a singing lesson: she would tell him before the lesson, and if he ordered her out of the flat directly, at least she would be spared the torture of enduring his current kind detachment.

Feeling inexplicably cheered by the relief of finally having made a decision, Christine stood up and replaced _Wuthering Heights_ on her bookshelf. She sat down again and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her head on her knees and casting a silent prayer to Heaven.

Erik strode blindly into his flat, shrugging his cloak from his shoulders and leaving it where it fell, ignoring Marguerite's happy greeting which rapidly turned to vocal displeasure as he failed to acknowledge her.

His head was swimming as he sank into his chair, and he reached for the decanter of brandy that sat on the table with a gesture of desperation. He rarely drank, but when he did, he noted with furious pain, it was inevitably caused by Christine.

Meg's voice rang in his head.

"_Doubtless it would be the best thing in the world for her to marry him."_

She had not told him that the Marquis had asked her to marry him. What did that mean? He felt his heart crack at the answer that instantly occurred to him, and swallowed his brandy rapidly, his throat burning. Was she still so afraid of him that she could not tell him the truth?

The news did not in itself surprise him: he had seen the expression in St Cyr's eyes whenever he watched Christine perform, and had recognised it with an emotion that might almost have been sympathy had he not felt the cold rush of fear that accompanied it. He was so like Raoul: handsome, charming, utterly kind and – an increasing rarity in this day and age – an aristocrat worthy of his noble name. That he loved Christine as well as her late husband had, Erik did not doubt; and how could she help loving him back?

Meg was right, of course – for all her deceptively sweet pixie-like features, she had a surprisingly sharp and perceptive mind beneath her improbably beautiful mass of blonde curls – if Christine was ever to be truly happy again, she should remarry: so dependent was she upon the love of those around her that without the steadfast devotion of one who would never leave her, she would never feel quite secure. And if she must remarry, Erik could think of nobody more suitable than the Marquis de St Cyr: the admission was painful but essential.

However, he knew just as well as Meg did that while she remained under his tuition, she would never marry; and he felt at least fairly confident that she would not willingly sacrifice his instruction in favour of a lesser musician. He did not flatter himself with the thought: he knew this dedication to him was based not on any personal attachment, but rather on the simple fact that he was the man most likely to resurrect her voice to its former glory.

But how much happier she would be if she could marry the Marquis – even if she had to endure temporary sorrow by the death of her career.

If Erik's reasoning was specious, he did not recognise it. So accustomed was he to think of himself only as a blight upon Christine's life that it had become habit to believe that she would be more fortunately placed almost anywhere than in a situation in which she was forced to endure his company on a regular basis.

Erik was not a man given to self-pity, largely because he had never esteemed himself worthy of even his own sympathy. He was far more accustomed to blame himself for his misfortunes, and was more comfortable with self-hatred well-practiced throughout his life.

It was so that he felt now: his duty was clear. He did not deserve her; he could never hope to own her love; and it was his responsibility as the older and wiser of them to sacrifice his own unimportant happiness to secure her the life she deserved. It did not signify what became of him: she was all that mattered.

And perhaps, one day, if he cherished the fire of his love for her tenderly enough, he would be able to see past the unbearably painful image of her in the Marquis' arms to the reasoning that this really was best for her.

He had to move quickly: he was not sure his resolve could endure further interaction with her, however shamefully his heart begged for just another hour with her. She was due to come to him for a lesson the next morning: he would tell her then.

Tomorrow he would be strong.

Tonight …

He unlocked the third drawer of the dresser where he kept his most treasured possessions, and withdrew the small golden ring which had once – however briefly – graced her finger. As if in a dream, he slipped it onto his own finger and reached into the drawer for a single sheet of paper. Christine's face, minutely rendered in fine ink lines, gazed up at him. He stared at it for a long time; and then he bent his head into his hands.

Tomorrow, he would be strong.

Tonight, he would allow himself to remember what it was to love her.

The next day – or perhaps simply a continuation of the last one, for without sleep days just become longer – Erik sat in his chair, holding himself very still, as if through controlling his movement he could halt the passage of time. He watched the clock's hands tick with torturous steadiness towards ten o'clock.

He felt nothing.

He was frozen inside: his duty was clear, his sacrifice accepted; and now he felt nothing but a kind of sick apprehension, willing the clock's hands to slow that ten o'clock might never arrive and he might never have to relinquish her; and in the same moment wishing that it could all be over. He realised with a start that he was beginning to fear that he would not be able to go through with it, and took a hasty drink of brandy to bolster his resolve.

At five to ten, there came a cheerful knock on the door, and Erik felt his heart thud once, dully, inside him. He rose slowly to answer the door, and cursed himself for fifty kinds of a fool as she breezed in with a beaming smile and a diffusion of the perfume of her hair into the air.

She spoke first, dispensing with her accustomed greetings in a manner that would have struck Erik as strange had he allowed himself to examine her behaviour as usual.

"I need to talk to you." Now that Erik looked more closely, he could see that she looked flushed and almost apprehensive, but happy. He turned away that he might no longer see the light in her eyes.

"As it happens, I also wish to speak with you."

"Oh!" She threw herself down onto the sofa and curled up in anticipation. "You first."

"I have been thinking a lot lately," he began, averting his eyes from her and mentally drawing on his prepared speech. "And I have come to the conclusion that I no longer wish you to visit me here."

Her smile faded as she uncurled her legs and rose slowly from the couch.

"I don't understand." She tried to smile. "Is this a joke?"

He looked back at her, realising too late what a mistake allowing himself another sight of her was. He turned away hastily and gripped the edge of the bookshelf in an effort to steady himself.

"No," he said shortly with all the composure he could muster, unable to formulate a more complete response.

Christine stared at him, icy panic flooding through her, the colour draining from her face. "What are you saying?" she whispered, not daring to reach out and touch him.

"I never want to see you again," he said flatly, without turning to look at her.

She stared at his back in blank incomprehension, terror freezing her insides. Then suddenly she rushed to him, catching his shoulders, shaking him to face her, lent strength by her sudden terrible fear.

Unexpected human contact had always confused and startled him, and his current despair made him tenser than ever. The panicked force with which he whirled away from Christine's touch made her lose her balance, and he had to bite his lip to keep himself from reaching out to catch her as she stumbled and fell to the floor, covering her face with her hands as she began to cry. He shook off the savage grief which threatened to overwhelm him, knowing that if he allowed her to speak to him he would forget himself.

"Don't touch me!" he thundered, taking a step away from her and clenching his hands into bloodless fists in an effort to maintain control.

"Look at me!" she demanded, her voice scratching with tears. She reached out to him desperately, but one look at the tension locking his shoulders was enough to make her refrain. "_Look at me!_"

He did.

"Tell me you don't love me," she demanded feverishly. "Look me in the eye and tell me you don't love me!"

He stared at her. He felt as though all the breath had been snatched out of his body; he could not do it. It would be the ultimate betrayal of the love he had cherished for so long, everything that was dear to him; the worst prostitution possible of the truest emotion he had ever felt.

Christine scrambled to her feet and came towards him, shaking her head. "You can't do it," she whispered. "You _know_ it's not true!"

Erik closed his eyes. He saw the Marquis; he saw her smile. Then he opened them and looked her steadily in the face.

"I do not love you," he said. His voice was perfectly level, his eyes clear. "Perhaps I never did."

Christine stared at him. She was deathly pale; she did not speak. Erik himself felt he could not speak another word if his very life depended on it: he could not breathe, and when finally Christine turned, still silent, and fled, the door slamming shut behind her with a noise that sounded like the gate to hell closing on him, he knelt beneath the shadow of the piano, bent by the crushing weight of pain more intense than he had ever imagined.

Halfway down the hall outside, he heard Christine sob; and all the strength he had built up over the past seven years melted away from him. He wanted to scream – to howl – to break something – and he found that all he could do was weep tears that felt like blood and threatened to suffocate him beneath the mask.

In spite of this, it never occurred to him to remove it.

It was less than an hour later that Antoinette Giry arrived at his door, her face grim.

"There has been an accident," she said crisply, without preamble. "You had better come at once."


	13. Chapter XIII

A/N – In which the Marquis makes an attempt at heroism, and Meg begins to try to win back her lost following.

Elanor Ainu – thanks for the cookies. :shares:

For Julie – who knows me well enough not to be worried by the last chapter's cliffhanger. ;) – and Gondolier, whose Fraternité has been distracting and inspiring me by turns!

Love and hugs to all reviewers. :)

The blind panic that had seized Erik had long since faded to a dull sense of numbness.

The part of his mind that remained yet sharp and clinical absorbed the news that Antoinette imparted with swift crispness as she strode home beside him: that Christine, crossing a street carelessly, had failed to see the carriage bearing down on her. By seemingly impossible coincidence, one of the stage hands from the Opéra Populaire had seen the incident, and had been sent to the Girys' house, where Christine now lay under the care of one of Paris' most eminent doctors.

The larger part could only comprehend the enormity of one fact: Christine was injured, perhaps dying – although Antoinette was, perhaps deliberately, vague about the details, her grim manner and hurry to return to Christine gave him to know that she was still in danger – and the last thing she would ever hear his voice – the only part of his unworthy self that she had ever come close to loving – say was _"I do not love you"_: a statement so transparently untrue that only the fear of the encroaching hysteria he could feel threatening prevented him from laughing at the irony.

Perhaps there comes a point beyond pain when the world seems so like a nightmare that there is nothing to be done but to endure as best one can and wait to wake up. It was in a state of passivity that Erik entered the Giry house, which was a scene of utter confusion. Annette, the Girys' little maid, was rushing around anxiously like a frightened rabbit, alternately carrying bowls of hot water and other items vaguely appropriate to a sickroom and comforting her little mistress, whose sobbing Erik could hear even through the walls.

It was the sound of Meg crying, a high-pitched keening that rose and fell like a child's heartbreak, that suddenly returned him to himself, and panic seized him. He caught Antoinette's arm.

"I must see her."

She shook her head. "Not yet."

"_Not yet_ … what in God's name have you brought me here for?" He seized her shoulders and shook her, blinded by terror to the look on her face. "The last rites – is that it? I must be here to witness her final breath?"

Antoinette shook his hands from her shoulders and stepped back, raising her head with scornful disdain.

"Annette will show you to the parlour," she told him in a tone that brooked no argument. Lowering her voice, "You will be of no service to her in this state. There is brandy in the parlour; take it if you feel you must." Anticipating his protest, she shook her head. "I know you do not drink. Every man has his limit."

Antoinette's brusque dismissal was more effective than a kinder attempt at persuasion would have been, and Erik obeyed.

The parlour was uncomfortably bright, and Erik extinguished the oil lamps, leaving only the flickering of the dying fire to cast light over the room. He sat down, and almost immediately rose to his feet again. He could not bear to sit – such inactivity felt like the worst sort of desertion. Had he been in a calmer frame of mind, he would have recognised the absurdity of his own frantic movement: he was suffering the sort of superstitious guilt children feel: feeling Christine's injury to be his fault, the remedy seemed to lie within his keeping. _If I sit down she'll die._ Had he been able to formulate his unease into such unequivocal language, he might have been able to expose his folly and throw off his terrible restless distraction.

He might never have turned to the brandy decanter on the table.

Meg came out of Christine's room quietly, shutting the door behind her. She sat down on a hard chair and let out her breath in a long sigh. She wiped her forehead with a pristine white handkerchief, then folded it neatly and replaced it in her pocket. Her mind was completely blank; she felt drained. The long hours in the oppressive darkness of the sick room, the low voice of the doctor issuing orders which only her mother's phenomenal organisation could possibly have executed, and, worst of all, the occasional moan from Christine as she twisted under Meg's hands.

All in preparation for those magical words: _"She is out of danger."_

But now Meg's exhaustion was swiftly catching up with her, and her relief lay muffled, blanketed under thick layers of cloudy fatigue.

She had only one task left to perform, and it was perhaps the most difficult of all that she had been asked to do that day: reassure the man whose silent presence in the parlour had been driving the household half mad with tension all day that his protégée's blood was not, after all, on his hands. She was not afraid of him: her mother's years of service and his tacit thanks had long since taught her to disregard _corps_ gossip that he was the son of the Devil or – perhaps more frighteningly – a ghost. It had been he who had secured her promotion to head of her row while still resident at the Opéra so many years ago; and she knew that his early approbation of her was the only reason she had been noticed by the management and consequently promoted. She was fully aware of what she owed to him; and whilst she did not fear him as a ghost, as a man she could not suppress the prickling of apprehension of the knowledge of what he would do on account of his one weak spot: the woman who now lay sleeping in the small bedroom across the passage.

Wearily, Meg stood, smoothing out the wrinkles in her dress with automatic neatness, and walked towards the parlour.

There was no time like the present, after all.

The room was almost completely dark. Through the gloom, Meg could see a figure seated in an armchair, leaning forward, his head in his hands. The only sound was the insistent patter of the rain drumming on the windowsill, coming through the window and soaking the carpet beneath.

As he heard her come in he rose abruptly and moved to stand with his back to her at the window, the light making an imposing silhouette of his tall figure.

"She is dead?" he asked, almost aggressively, as if somehow addressing the worst would make him better able to bear it. Meg felt her heart stir with pity at his obvious grief and took a step towards him, reaching out one hand to him.

"No! Oh, no."

He turned abruptly back to her.

"No?" The word quivered in the air between them like the note of a finale.

Meg shook her head dumbly, noticing with a faint chill of fear the empty brandy decanter on the table, a decanter which had only that morning been full.

"Dr. Drysdale says she's passed the worst. She's going to be all right."

She heard him draw a shuddering breath, and as if from sudden weakness he sank into the armchair by the fire and buried his head in his hands.

"Oh my God."

Meg felt her fear melt away, and without thinking, she moved to kneel beside him.

"There, there," she murmured, touching her hand to his arm. "She's going to be fine." She felt him shudder under her touch with one gulping sob. "It's all going to be all right, I promise. She'll get well; and then …"

He shook his head blindly, and silence descended. "I should go," he said at last, looking around for his cloak and hat. "She wouldn't want me to be here when she wakes."

"No!" Meg reached out to stop him. "You must wait. You must go in and see her when she wakes."

He looked at her and shook his head. "She wouldn't want it."

"Don't be _ridiculous_!"

It had been said among the _corps_ that Meg Giry was growing more like her mother every day. For the first time, she could recognise her mother's tone in her own voice: sharp, unwilling to suffer the foolishness of others; and, although the sensation surprised her as much as it obviously surprised Erik, she found she rather liked it.

"She is awake now. You must go in to see her, if only to say goodbye."

Slowly, he nodded, and Meg released her breath.

"Come on then," she concluded more gently. "This way."

The room was dark, but Erik barely noticed it as he made his way over to the bed and knelt beside the small, still figure looking so pale and fragile under the blanket.

"Christine?" Meg whispered.

Erik heard Christine murmur softly in response, her face still hidden in the shadows. Meg moved to sit on the bed beside her and gently stroked her hair.

"Sweetheart," she whispered. "Erik's come to see you."

Erik heard Christine breathe his name, her voice confused and disoriented.

"Christine?" he murmured. He saw her hand move across the covers, and reached out to take it, before remembering himself and withdrawing. "How do you feel?"

He saw a tear slide down her cheek, translucent in the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains.

"What do you care?"

Meg impulsively took Christine's hand to quiet her, glancing anxiously towards Erik, kneeling motionless beside the bed, his face like stone.

"Christine ..." His voice was a kiss, a caress, and Christine closed her eyes on tears.

She turned away, clutching Meg's hand tightly, another tear sliding down her cheek, belying the anger in her voice. "Don't feel you have to pretend to care for my sake!"

"Christine, hush!" Meg looked up at Erik, distressed.

Erik rose, a black shadow unfurling into stiffly rigid posture. "You are, of course, quite right," he said stiffly, his expression impossible to gauge in the dimness of the room. "Please allow me to wish you a speedy recovery." He turned to Meg, stifling the protests that had risen automatically in her throat. "I suggest you contact the Marquis de St Cyr," he said shortly, turning and disappearing through the door before she could speak.

Christine dissolved into tears and turned her face towards the pillow. Meg rose, and ran out of the room just in time to hear the front door slam behind him. She stumbled down the stairs, tripping on her skirt, and dashed out into the street. Her heart pounding, she scanned the street anxiously for him, but to no avail; he had disappeared.

She stood still on the steps of the house for a long moment, one hand at her temples in a mute gesture of frustration, her hair coming loose from its pins and being swept every way by the wind.

She glanced up and down the street one last time, then sighed and stepped back over the threshold, disregarding the autumn leaves that had blown in as she shut the door behind her.

St Cyr came later that evening in immediate response to a message Antoinette had sent, and stayed with Christine until she fell asleep, whereupon he retired to the parlour to drink tea with Antoinette and wait for her to wake again. Meg, who fell asleep in her chair a little after midnight, did not see the way his handsome eyes darkened as Antoinette told him, in response to his question of how it had happened, that Christine had been allowed to make her own way home after a singing lesson.

It was about three days later that Christine was finally well enough to sit up in bed and take up her embroidery again. Meg, seated on a small stool at her bedside to keep her company, found her mind wandering more and more frequently from her own slightly crooked rose, and finally she abandoned the effort as a bad job.

"Christine," she began.

Her friend looked up from her own precisely-stitched flower. She yet looked pale and tired, and Meg suspected that she was not sleeping well. A pervading sadness seemed to have overcome her whole being; and although she was sweet and polite as ever with St Cyr and the Girys, Meg could not help noticing the distant sorrow in her friend's eyes.

Meg moved closer to her and took her hands, an overwhelming rush of tenderness coming over her.

"Tell me what the matter is," she begged. "Tell me what's wrong."

Christine looked away and took up her sewing again.

"Dear Meg," she said, not meeting her friend's eyes. "You are dramatic. I think perhaps you have been working at the Opéra too long." The flash of pain that sketched briefly through her eyes as she realised what she had said gave Meg the reassurance she needed.

"It's him, isn't it." Her tone did not suggest a question, and Christine did not receive it as such. "Christine, what did he say to you that day?"

The stage hand who had witnessed Christine's accident that day had told Meg all he had seen: that Christine, clearly distressed, had not been looking where she was going.

"Cryin' and all, she was," he confided. "Ran right out into the street. It's a wonder she warn't killed." He nodded sagely. "She were that lucky."

From this, and from the fact that Meg knew Christine had planned to meet Erik for a singing lesson after rehearsal, she had deduced that something had happened between them to upset Christine to such an extent that she could no longer be trusted to cross the street with care; and Erik's own grief and her friend's incomprehensible rudeness later that day had served to convince Meg that Christine was keeping something from her. She had long suspected that Christine's feelings towards Erik were not what they had been so many years ago when he had first taught her.

Christine dipped her head, her hair falling forward to cover her face. It took a moment for Meg to realise that she was crying.

"Oh, Meg," came brokenly from behind her hair. "I had meant to tell him – oh, it doesn't matter – but he was so cruel …" She shook her head distractedly. "And he won't teach me anymore …"

Meg leaned forward and put her arms around her friend, and Christine dissolved into complete incoherence.

"All right, my love," she whispered, stroking Christine's hair. "We will mend it."

St Cyr stepped back from the door. He felt vaguely guilty: he was a man with very strict notions of honour, and listening at doors was the sort of grubby, contemptuous betrayal of trust he had always despised. Christine appeared to have the effect on him of making him forget everything that was due of him – he still felt sick when he thought of how close he had come to betraying Raoul and begging Christine to come away with him all those years ago in England – and he hated himself for the weakness he could not shake off.

He still loved her; and, although he entertained a healthy contempt for adolescent protestations of everlasting love, he could not imagine himself ever being able to stop. She did not love him: he knew that; one day he was sure he would be able to accept it; but what was harder to absorb was the implied message of what she had told Meg.

St Cyr only distantly heard a knock at the door as he sat down and rested his elbows on his knees.

Raoul had told him all about the Phantom of the Opera, of course; and the minute he had met the silent, tense stranger in Christine's music room, and her hasty search for a lie had yielded the half-truth that he was her music teacher, he had recognised the mask and the scantly-veiled danger of the man as surely as though he had known him all his life. He had worried for days over Christine's – surely unwise? – association with a man he knew to be so dangerous; but he could not forget the sadness that had haunted Raoul's eyes as he told the story. His voice came back to St Cyr as clearly as though they stood in the same room once again.

"He loved her so, Armand. And I fear I did him an injustice; I was so afraid he would hurt her. But now I think he never would have done: even at the end, although he might have killed me, he never tried to hurt her. And now I think that … perhaps he loved her … just as I do."

But Raoul had been wrong. St Cyr clenched his fists, anger beginning to seep through him. Dear, kind Raoul, always so eager to see the best in everyone – even the man who had tried to kill him! But he had been wrong. The Phantom was still dangerous – and now he _had_ hurt Christine, and upset her so that only by a miracle had she escaped serious injury – perhaps even –

The thought that he could have lost her forever made St Cyr go cold again, but this time his pain was tainted with rage. It was the Phantom's fault; he to whom Christine had been so kind, imparted her inherent sweetness and charity despite his terrible flaws.

St Cyr stood, unable to bear the inactivity of sitting still, and strode to the door. But as he opened the door he stopped still – for leaving through the front door was a tall man whose face he could not see.

Antoinette closed the front door behind Erik and sighed. He had come, as he came every day, punctual and abrupt as ever, for her report on Christine's progress. He did not go in to see Christine herself, and became instantly aloof if it was suggested that he might: Antoinette privately suspected that he had simply found himself unable to stay away from her entirely and this small concession of daily visits under the pretence of monitoring her progress was the only indulgence he permitted the emotion he had still not quite learned to conceal.

She turned back to go in to Christine and started to find St Cyr coming towards her, his face distressed.

"Who was that?" he asked her urgently.

Taken aback by his tone, Antoinette replied, "You startled me." It was an answer that he might have accepted from Meg's fluttering abstraction, but not her mother. Her vagueness gave him all the truth he needed.

"It was him, wasn't it?"

Antoinette drew herself up to her full height and employed a stare which was, perfected over years of ballet tuition, guaranteed to bring a herd of errant ballet rats to their pink-clad knees. "I'm sure I don't know who you mean."

Secretly, she was afraid. The Marquis had been spending every daylight hour at their house ever since Christine's accident, and she had never seen him other than affable. He had been occasionally weary or anxious, but never less than absolutely courteous and genuinely amiable: now he looked furious, and Antoinette's years of dealing with angry lovers of her girls had taught her that a slow-burning fire raised in a mild-tempered man was infinitely more dangerous than the swift, violent passion of another.

The Marquis fixed her with a smouldering look that sent fear chilling through her.

"Thank you, Antoinette," he said grimly, and set off into the darkness after the black-clad figure still to be seen striding down the street.


	14. Chapter XIV

A/N – A long one, this one, I'm afraid; but all in preparation for the end: there is only one more chapter to come after this one, and then I swear I'll stop.

Christine Persephone – the return of Sarah, just for you …

I'm running out of chances to say this, so just one more time: thank you to all who review. Love you all. Hugs and cookies to be given out liberally next chapter!

St Cyr found himself forced to speed his natural pace to keep up with the dark-clad figure striding away from the Giry house.

"You!" he called out. The figure – _the Phantom_ – gave no sign of having heard.

"_Phantom._" At this – a name which the man surely had not heard in the better part of five years – his back flexed as though upon receipt of a blow, and it almost seemed to St Cyr that the man slowed his pace deliberately; that he allowed himself to be caught.

St Cyr threw himself on top of the living shadow, pinning him to the ground, a small but wickedly sharp dagger emblazoned with the St Cyr family crest at his throat.

"Don't move," he ordered.

The spectre below him did not appear to have had any intentions of the sort; he did not struggle.

"So still you haunt her." St Cyr tried to force calm into his voice, but his heart was racing now, and he could still hear the sound of Christine's sobs, overriding his reason as anger rose in him. "You turn her away, you torment her until she almost manages to get herself killed, and still you return?"

The man did not respond, and St Cyr lost his temper.

"Answer when you're spoken to, damn you!" He struck the Phantom across the back of the head, and saw that the man's face, when he raised his head, was bleeding from the contact with the rough ground.

"What is it you want from me?" he asked, his voice expressionless. "A confession of the wrongs I have done her?" He raised a hand to touch his face, and looked at his fingers with distaste as they came away wet with blood. "I fear you would tire of the recitation long before I had catalogued them all."

Rage flooded through St Cyr. "Do you think you are _funny_?"

The other man lowered his head with a barely perceptible sigh, and turned his face away from the Marquis to rest on the cold ground, now stained with his blood.

St Cyr pressed his dagger closer to the man's throat, eliciting no sound other than a sharp intake of breath as the cold metal bit into the tender skin exposed above his collar. "Tell me you will stay away from her, and I will spare your life."

The man beneath him laughed. "Just even to the end. How like her husband you are, Monsieur le Marquis."

"_How dare you speak of him!_" The Marquis struck his victim again, the barbed reference to the dearest friend he had ever had striking home and ridding him of his self-control.

The heavily ornamented dagger was pressed sharply against the Phantom's throat now.

"If you have any sin to confess, do it now," St Cyr said, his voice shaking a little. "I would not condemn your soul."

The man began to laugh. "You need not trouble yourself. Someone far greater than you has made it His mission to do that."

St Cyr shook his head. "I will not give you another opportunity. Make your last confession."

"Yes, Othello," the other man muttered with wintry humour.

The reference was not lost on St Cyr, whose tenuous grip on his temper snapped.

"So be it!"

Erik closed his eyes as the younger man raised his dagger.

"Armand!"

Erik glanced up in amazement to see Christine rushing along the street towards them, with Meg not far behind her. Her hair whipped around her head, coming loose from her headscarf. She reached out for St Cyr.

"Please, Armand, don't."

"This man is a monster, Christine. A murderer."

Erik rolled his eyes, and glanced away from the Marquis to see Christine shaking her head. "No, Armand. No."

"This would not be a sin!" he shouted, suddenly furious. "All he has done …!"

"_Don't hurt him!_"

Sobbing, she flung herself down in the mud beside the two men, grasping St Cyr's hand. Erik stiffened at her sudden proximity, and for the first time, St Cyr felt him move as though he might struggle for escape.

"_Please._"

His dagger still against Erik's throat, St Cyr took Christine's face in his free hand, forcing her to look him in the face.

"Why?" The one word reverberated in the suddenly still air.

Christine looked down at Erik, tears shining in her eyes.

"I love him," she whispered.

The dagger slipped from St Cyr's hand, the point scoring a shallow cut down Erik's neck. Christine gave a gasping sob; but neither of the men appeared to notice.

Erik shrank away from the two young people kneeling at his side. St Cyr was shaking his head.

"No. No …"

"I'm sorry!" Tears had appeared in Christine's eyes. "I _told_ you I couldn't marry you!"

"_What?_"

"_Be quiet!_" St Cyr pushed Erik roughly. "You be silent!"

"_Don't!_" Christine reached out to shield Erik from St Cyr, moaning as she saw the abrasions on his face from the Marquis' earlier blows. She withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket and – hardly giving Erik time to feel astonishment that she should actually be carrying so mundanely essential an item – made to stem the bleeding. He shrank away from her, turning the expressionless plane of the mask to face her, and she recoiled as if she had been struck.

"Christine." St Cyr reached out desperately for her, but she pulled her hand away from him.

"Go home, Armand," she said. Both men started: for the first time, the delicate little girl kneeling on the ground before them sounded like an adult. "We'll talk tomorrow."

The Marquis rose like a man in a dream, defeat etched on his countenance. He tried to speak, but abandoned the attempt, and at last, he turned and stumbled away. Meg, still hovering in the shadows, hesitated, and then, at Christine's nod, followed him away down the street.

Left alone, Christine took the grazed side of Erik's face in her hands and inspected the wounds. When she spoke, she no longer sounded fully in control; tears again threatened, and her voice trembled.

"Did he hurt you?"

Erik was staring at her with frozen eyes. "I hardly know … I feel the strangest pain …"

Christine coloured under his gaze.

"Why …" He hesitated. "Why did you tell the Marquis you wouldn't marry him?"

Christine made a sobbing sound of frustration. "Weren't you _listening_? I told him I couldn't marry him because of … you …" She could not look him in the eye.

There was a long silence. When Erik's voice finally spoke, it was hushed, bewildered, pained: childlike.

"_Why?_"

Christine closed her eyes. "Because I _love_ you. Because the thought of being with him when all I want is you makes me feel sick … and because I would rather all my life love a man who feels nothing for me than take the heart of one for whom I will never care."

Blinded by tears, feeling that her heart would break within her, she stumbled to her feet and began blindly to walk away from him.

The touch of his hand on her arm only made her sob more.

"Don't … I can't bear it …"

His voice caressing, velvet in her ear.

"Any man who can look on you and feel nothing for you is a fool."

She stopped blindly, amazed, bewildered, and turned to look at him with the big, tear-filled eyes of a child.

He kissed her.

He whispered her name over and over again, and then, the words fulfilling no other purpose than surrender to seven years' longing to say them, "My love …"

Christine was weeping with delirious joy, and he held her away from him, tilting her face up. Erik kissed each eyelid, and brushed away her tears with gentle fingers. He kissed her fingertips and smoothed his own hands through her hair, discarding her flimsy headscarf which fell unheeded to the ground behind them.

"My love …"

Christine pressed forward to rest her head against his chest, and he felt her stumble as her strength gave way. He caught her and lifted her with infinite care into his arms, and she lay against him with her head nestled into the crook of his shoulder like a small, sleepy child.

"I am dreaming," she mumbled, rubbing her face against the soft skin where his hair met his neck.

"Then pray we never wake," he whispered, pressing his lips against her hair.

It was the first time he had ever dared to pair them together in words.

Antoinette cast her eyes shrewdly over the pair who entered the Giry household – Christine still resting in Erik's arms like a beloved child – and allowed herself the smallest of smiles as she met Erik's eyes before ushering Christine back to bed.

The doctor was furious with them all: Christine for having left her bed when she was so clearly still in need of medical attention, and with the two women for having let her; but one glance from the tall silent stranger who assumed his place of honour at her bedside was enough to silence his querulous complaints.

Meg, who had followed St Cyr back to his Paris house, arrived home very quietly, much later that night. Erik observed that she and Antoinette closeted themselves in the parlour and talked in low voices for quite some time; and Meg continued to absent herself from the house at frequent intervals over the next few weeks.

St Cyr drew Erik aside several days before the wedding and apologised with aristocratic formality for all that had occurred between them. He shouldered all of the blame; he had been entirely in the wrong; and his only concern now was Christine's happiness. Erik, who sympathised with the Marquis most heartily as he prepared to watch the woman he loved marry another man, accepted the apology without elaborate words which would have only worsened the situation.

It was only as the Marquis took his leave that he suddenly turned back to Erik, and his voice was for the first time free of the conscious mantle of good breeding that he took upon himself whenever he felt uncomfortable.

"You have loved her longer than I, Monsieur; I hope very much that you will be happy together. And … when I look at her today, I think that Raoul would have been glad to see her as she is today."

Unaccountably moved, Erik could only nod over a sudden lump in his throat. He stepped forward and grasped the Marquis' hand in his own.

"Thank you," he said earnestly.

St Cyr nodded, and gave a little half-smile that made him resemble Raoul more than ever.

Erik and Christine planned to marry, very quietly, at a small church outside Paris. Christine was faintly surprised at the ease of the business, until she learned, through the unguarded conversation of a young verger, that only an extremely generous donation from a wealthy and reclusive benefactor had allowed the rebuilding of the church after the devastating storm that had ravaged the neighbourhood four years ago.

The only guests were to be the Girys, the Persian daroga Nadir Khan, Christine's faithful butler Reeves, and the Marquis de St Cyr, who had agreed to give Christine away with a fixed smile that did not quite disguise the lines around his eyes.

The morning of the wedding dawned bright and sunny, and the inside of the Giry household was absolute chaos. Expensive dresses were strewn over the beds like so much confetti, and Meg was engaged in trying to arrange Christine's hair and direct Annette in finding her bouquet at the same time as pinning up an errant hem on her own bridesmaid's dress.

The arrival of St Cyr restored some semblance of normality to the house: as Meg showed him in to the room in which Christine was getting ready, she saw his jaw tighten and his hands momentarily clench as he first beheld her sitting at Meg's dressing table, resplendent in her beautiful dress. Her hair was still tousled around her shoulders, but with the sunlight spilling through the window onto her slight figure, Meg could well imagine the sudden torrent of emotion pouring through the Marquis.

"My dear," he took a step towards her, and she rose with an eager smile to greet him. "You look …" He broke off, and made a gesture with his hands that spoke volumes. "Very pretty," he concluded, reining himself in.

"I'm so glad to see you," said Christine, and meant it. St Cyr gave her a slightly odd smile, and retreated a step or two.

"You must forgive me for disturbing you in the midst of getting ready; I come as emissary from your fiancé."

Christine frowned. "Oh?"

St Cyr handed over a pristine white envelope with Christine's name scribed in elegant swirling handwriting on the front. She took it and drew out a sheet of thick white paper. Frowning, she read:

_My dear,_

_I write these words to you rather than speaking them to your face partly to preserve the delightfully eccentric custom of separating the bride and groom on the morning of the wedding – it would surely be foolhardy of me to court disaster at this late stage! – but largely, I confess, through sheer cowardice. I cannot put off what I must say here any longer, and I fear my self-control is not always what it should be when I find myself close to you._

_Here I offer you one last chance of freedom: should you have changed your mind, a single word via the Marquis will be sufficient to release you unconditionally from a foolish promise made in a moment and repented at leisure. _

_Regardless of your answer to this letter, I must thank you for the happiness you have brought me these past weeks – and indeed years, for no pain can quite obliterate the lingering happiness that is a memory of our time together – and know that I remain,_

_Yours, etc._

_Erik. _

Christine closed her eyes on tears, and pressed the letter to her chest. She swallowed hard, and smiled through her tears, her heart too full for speech as she realised quite how much he was prepared to sacrifice for her happiness.

"Am I to infer from your silence that your answer is as I told him it would be?" She opened her eyes to see St Cyr smiling at her, and nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks like the most exquisite sort of joy.

The Marquis bowed formally and turned to leave.

"You know, my dear," he said in the doorway, "I cannot quite make up my mind which of you is the luckier: him for having you ... or you for having him."

Meg, who had cried all the way through Christine's first wedding, spent this second casting anxious glances at St Cyr, who sat across from her with an unceasing, rigidsmile that wavered only momentarily as Erik bent to kiss Christine, fanning his fingers through her hair.

Christine's dress was a delicate shade of off-white which satisfied both propriety and her own wish to show respect for Raoul, but as she stepped out of the church on Erik's arm, the sunlight caught the silk and it blazed so brightly and so purely white that Meg could not interpret it but as a divine blessing on their new beginning.

Meg waved at the retreating carriage bearing Erik and Christine away to their new home in Carthau, a small village outside Paris. Christine's house in Paris was to be sold, and her household dissolved: the couple were taking with them only Reeves, Christine's faithfully devoted butler, and a small dark-haired servant girl named Sarah to act as Christine's maid, the long-suffering Carmen having announced earlier that year that she intended to marry Frederick, the second footman.

She turned back to the small party standing outside the church, and her eye was caught by the Marquis, who stood apart from the others, following the carriage with his eyes as it sped away into the bright sunshine. She walked over to him, and silently pressed his hand; he looked at her and gave her a pained little smile which wrung her heart.

It was some two months after Erik and Christine's wedding that she announced that the Marquis had asked her to marry him, and that she had accepted.

Christine had never been happier than in those first few delirious weeks after her wedding. Erik was as kind, as fascinating, as tenderly attentive as ever, and now that their final barriers had been stripped away, their time together was richer, fuller, and so much more precious. She was overjoyed, if briefly astonished, to hear of St Cyr's proposal to Meg – her little friend had always longed to be swept off her feet by a romantic young nobleman, and if circumstances were not quite ideal, she had no doubts that Meg's sunny disposition and St Cyr's kind temperament would soon render them so – and found herself and Erik making frequent trips into Paris to visit them.

Their holidays in Paris also, of course, included prolonged periods at Nadir's house. During these visits, Erik and Nadir would drink brandy, play chess, and argue; and Christine would make brave if undistinguished ventures into the field of cookery and watch them with growing amusement.

When she looked back on that sublimely happy period directly after her marriage, she could pinpoint the exact day that things began to go wrong: it all began with a really very ordinary dinner at St Cyr's town mansion, which was beginning to bear evidence of Meg's handiwork, with increasingly floral colour schemes and what seemed, even to Christine, an unusual profusion of white kittens.

Meg herself spent the entire dinner apologising flutteringly for the state of the food. Her cook – she explained several times – was young and very inexperienced, and there had been some unpleasantness in the kitchen earlier that week about Gladys and the fish, which naturally had upset her very much, and Meg didn't like to complain, because she was really so very young, and she tried so hard …

Erik, as usual, ate and drank nothing, unwilling to lift his mask, but smiled to see Christine attempting to force down the rubbery whelks with gusto.

The next morning, Christine was violently ill.

"Poor Meg will be so embarrassed," she laughed weakly as Erik held her head over a bowl, stroking her hair gently. "She'll …" She was convulsed with another spasm, and Erik winced to see her in pain.

"Shh, my love," he murmured, tenderly stroking her hair. "It will pass …"

Christine looked up at him and tried to smile. "Oh, I know." She coughed. "It will just teach me never to eat at Meg's again!"

Erik laughed softly and kissed her hair.

But Fate proved Erik an incompetent prophet. Christine's illness did not pass; and by the end of the first week which had seen her largely bedridden, Erik was sick with anxiety. He had no idea what could cause such sickness; and the prolonged period of illness served to weaken Christine, always frail, to the point of collapse. She was not strong enough to withstand such an onslaught of ill-health, and he was terrified for her. His every waking moment was spent at her side, silently and desperately trying to subdue the rising sensation of dread that grew every time she moved restlessly on the pillow.

_God would not be so cruel as to take her from him_, he told himself repeatedly. _Not now._

He was infuriated at his inability to convince even himself; and he knew by the look in Christine's eyes that his constant reassurance did no more to ease her own growing anxiety.

And then, quite suddenly, her illness lifted. Erik awoke one day to find Christine on her feet for the first time in what seemed like months. She was a little shaky, and frail from her long period of inactivity, but after a few days she seemed stronger, and the tight knot in Erik's throat began to ease a little.

By the time a week or two had passed, she seemed to have completely forgotten that she had ever been ill, and was pottering happily around their house with renewed enthusiasm.

Even Erik, who watched her closely, slowly found his fears beginning to ease. She was so obviously happy; she brought a lump to his throat every time she came bounding into his study with some fresh excitement: a crocus patch in the garden; a bird's nest outside her window; there was always something to be found to entertain and delight her. She was utterly beautiful, and enchanting in her _joie de vivre_; and Erik loved her more deeply and more helplessly than he had ever dreamed he could.

A/N – More to come. Oh, come on – you didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?


	15. Chapter XV

A/N – And so here it is: the end.

Love to all the marvellous people who have reviewed:

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everyone who offered help, advice, beating with obvious-sticks, and beta-reading (you know who you are); and especially to my darling Steph for constant support, advice and pressure for updates!

For all E/C fans everywhere – lots of love to you all. :)

Not long after moving to Carthau, Christine had secured herself a place in the church choir, and although Erik remained yet overprotective of her health, several weeks after her indisposition, he finally judged her well enough to resume attendance at rehearsals.

It was a cold day in November that Erik finally spied her returning through the fields, her breath smoking in the crisp country air. Rehearsal must have run long, he guessed, and although he had been irritated by her absence – or perhaps, he grudgingly admitted, by the knot of concern that tightened his throat whenever she was late – he could not suppress the joyful thrill of love that rose in him as he watched her running like a child across the field.

He poured her tea from the pot he had been keeping warm and carried it into the sitting room for her.

"Erik, I have the most wonderful news!" She danced exuberantly into the room and planted a kiss on his cheek in greeting. He smiled indulgently and handed her her favourite china cup, patterned with botanically dubious blue and pink forget-me-nots.

"Sit down; drink your tea. You must be exhausted."

"Oh, I'm _far_ too excited to sit!"

Erik laughed gently.

"Tell me your news then."

She reached out and clasped his hand, her eyes flashing with joy. He smiled and folded his hands around her own, looking into her eyes.

"Erik … we're going to have a baby."

The expression in Erik's eyes changed. He stood up abruptly and walked away from her.

"Christine, that isn't funny."

"_Funny_ – no, Erik, it's wonderful!" She stood uncertainly, and reached out to touch his shoulder, confused and hurt by his attitude. "Aren't you pleased?"

He turned to look at her, and the expression in his eyes almost brought her to her knees.

"Christine, please tell me that this is an extremely tasteless joke."

"Erik –"

"Oh, dear God." He turned and sat down abruptly on the divan, covering his face with his hands.

Christine gazed at him, stricken. "What's the matter? I thought you would be pleased … as happy as I am …" Her voice caught on tears, and she turned her face quickly away, curving her arm around her stomach.

Erik saw the unconscious gesture, and felt sick. _How could he have allowed this to happen?_

"_Happy?_" He could not conceive of her failing to understand him so badly. "Christine, can't you see … what if …?" His voice faltered, and he passed a hand distractedly through his hair. "How can you not see?"

"Oh, Erik, it doesn't matter how our child looks –"

"Doesn't _matter_?" Christine was taken aback by the sudden depth of rage in his voice. "My _God_, Christine! How can you say such a heartless …" he rose from the divan, evidently struggling for words, "_wicked_ thing? Of _course_ it matters – do you believe that I would _ever_ allow a child – _any_ child, let alone one born of you – to live my life again?"

He sat down heavily on the divan, breathing raggedly, his head in his hands. Christine wanted desperately to go to him and put her arms around him, but such was the furious grief that surrounded him that she did not dare.

He looked up at her, and the expression in his eyes terrified her more than anything she could have imagined.

"I warn you now, Christine, if it looks like me I'll break its neck myself!"

"_Erik!_" Christine was weeping, her arms clutched around her stomach. "No –" She reached out desperately for him, but he threw her hands away and whirled away from her.

"_Don't touch me!_"

Christine cowered, terrified. Erik was standing at the mantelpiece, his head braced on his hands, his shoulders heaving. It took her a minute to realise that he was crying.

She took a step towards him and pressed her face against his back, her heart softening.

"Shh …" she murmured, stroking his back and shoulders. "It's all right …"

She heard him give one gulping sob and then he turned, pulling her into his arms, burying his face in her hair, clinging to her.

"Christine …" His arms tightened around her. "I can't …"

"My love …" She shook her head, smoothing her hands over his head, stroking his hair. She could feel his difficulty in breathing, and pulled at the straps of the mask, tugging it away so that he could breathe without its constraint. She felt him shudder and hide his face in her hair.

"Shh … my love, my love, it's all right. Shh."

She could feel him trembling beneath her hands. They sank to the floor, and stayed there for a long time, Christine gently stroking his hair and face, kissing his fingertips.

When at last Erik helped Christine to her feet, he held her to him for a moment and kissed her as though his heart were breaking.

Christine's confinement was the hardest thing she had ever had to endure. She experienced heavy nausea and intense pain that frequently confined her to her bed; and although Erik was solicitous in his customary adoration, she could not forget the sudden flash of horrified anguish in his eyes when he had first come across her on one of her less good days and realised that he might not only lose his child should it be born with his curse, but his wife as well.

He withdrew into himself, and no matter how Christine tried, she could not induce him to open up to her. Although he was courteous and attentive as ever, he shrank away from her touch, and ceased coming to her bed to talk with her late at night.

For eight months, Erik and Christine lived in daily terror: Erik terrified lest he should lose everything he had ever wanted so soon after he had so miraculously attained it, Christine dreading the day of delivery in case Erik should carry out his threat to dispose of the baby should it be born with his scars.

Christine did not recognise the depths of Erik's despair until the fine cool morning in early spring when she and Meg decided to take a walk to the neighbouring village out of sheer boredom: Christine was beginning to realise that there seemed very little to do in her small cottage without the fire of Erik's personality to distract her.

By the time they reached the village, Christine was beginning to feel the effects of the exercise, and Meg, nervously solicitous as ever, insisted that she should sit down. They ventured into the small village church – and Christine stopped abruptly.

A figure, clad all in black, holding a fedora in one hand, was engaged in conversation with the priest, moving one elegant hand in eloquent emphasis to his words.

Christine caught Meg by the arm and pulled her back behind a pillar, indicating that her little friend should hold her tongue.

"Christine –"

"_Hush!_"

Meg subsided into silence, and Christine watched breathlessly as Erik concluded his conversation with the priest and turned to take his leave: the priest reached out and touched his sleeve. Christine recognised, even from a distance, Erik's instinctive recoil, but the man did not seem discouraged: he pressed Erik's hand and spoke some words at which Erik nodded slowly. Christine recognised the words "Thank you" on his lips; he inclined his head in a graceful gesture of respect and walked away, replacing the fedora on his head.

Meg, alarmed by her friend's frozen posture, grasped Christine's suddenly cold hand, and spoke her name, but Christine ignored her and rushed forward to the priest, who had paused by a hanging basket to admire the early spring blooms beginning to show tentative colours in the sunlight.

"Father!"

The priest glanced up, and smiled. "Good morning, my child. What can I do for you?"

"You must forgive my asking, but … the gentleman who was just speaking to you … does he come here often?"

The priest smiled fondly and tucked a stray flower back among the others. "He is here every day now." Beside her, Christine felt Meg gasp, and she stepped hurriedly on her foot to prevent her from speaking. The priest continued, oblivious. "He comes here every morning to pray. His wife is not well … I believe he is very worried about her." The priest smiled sadly. "I pray every day that here he can find the guidance he needs in God."

Christine closed her eyes, feeling weak. How she loved him; the thought that he had been so frantic with worry that he had turned to God made her feel that suddenly she understood his distant attitude these past months.

She was aware of Meg thanking the priest and ushering her out into the sunshine, concerned by her sudden pallor. Once outside, Christine's little friend rounded on her.

"Christine, are you all right?"

Christine, blinking back unexpected tears that were born of an emotion utterly removed from sorrow, nodded and suddenly smiled. "Oh, Meg," she whispered.

Meg touched her hair gently. "Do you want to go home?"

Christine nodded.

The two girls reached the stile at the other end of the field that led to Christine's little cottage, and Meg was just opening the gate for her friend when they saw Erik emerge from the cottage, distress visible in his posture even from across the field. They hurried towards him; and as he caught sight of them, Christine recognised her own name on his lips.

"Christine." He was at her side in a moment, wrapping his arms around her, pressing her face into his shoulder. "Thank God. I thought …" She felt his arms tighten around her. "Don't ever do that again."

Christine turned her face to rest on his chest. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "We thought we would be back before you were."

Meg shuffled her feet in the background. "I … think I had better be going," she mumbled awkwardly. "Armand will be wondering where I am."

Christine blew her friend a kiss, and Meg smiled and scampered off. Even after all this time, there yet remained about her the lingering vestiges of her old discomfort around Erik. Christine looked back at Erik, and he released her, stepping away from her, evidently embarrassed by his display of emotion.

"I brought the wool you wanted," he told her flatly, making a gesture towards the cottage. "I'll go in and start the fire." He began to walk away from her.

"Erik …"

He turned back to her, alarm registering in his voice. "Are you all right?"

She nodded slowly. "Erik …" She reached out, and he took her hand cautiously, his eyes wary. "Erik, please talk to me. Tell me what's wrong."

She could sense him withdrawing, felt him release her fingers. "I'm afraid I don't follow you, my dear."

Christine looked up into his eyes. "Meg and I walked over to the next village this morning," she said softly, and saw alarm flash in his eyes. "We went into the church …"

He turned away from her abruptly. Her voice followed him.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He turned, very slowly, to look at her. "It is cold for you out here," he observed in a low voice. "I think it would be more judicious to continue this conversation inside."

Christine held out her arm, and he took it after a moment's hesitation and guided her inside.

Christine sat down in the armchair and drew her feet up under her, watching as Erik knelt to light the fire. He took an unusually long time, and she realised that he was trying to avoid the conversation.

She spoke. "Erik?"

He looked up slowly, and she was horrified to see the same hunted look in his eyes that he had worn after their first disastrous performance of _Don Juan Triumphant_. Was this truly what their marriage had become?

"Please," she gestured to the empty spot on the sofa beside her. "Come and sit here next to me."

He did so, reluctantly, and Christine reached out and took his hand.

"Would it help if I told you that I love you?" she asked, and she saw Erik's head go up sharply at her unexpected opening. "Because I do."

Erik closed his eyes, and for a moment Christine was sure that he was going to cry.

"I know that you do." His voice was flat and unyielding.  
Christine waited. "I wish that you would tell me you love me too," she whispered, when it became apparent that he was not intending to continue. "Unless …" her heart nearly stopped at the possibility, "unless of course … you _don't_ love me anymore …"  
Erik was silent, and Christine closed her eyes in despair.  
"Is that what this is all about, then?" she asked in a voice rough with tears. "After everything … you've just _decided_ you don't love me anymore?" She stood up hastily, the tears falling fast now. She could hear her voice shrilling as she scrabbled desperately – and vainly – for composure. "I won't _let_ you, do you hear me? You _must_ love me … I _won't_ let you go!"  
Christine took a step fast away from him and stumbled on the rough edge of the carpet, falling to her knees. She heard him rise with alarm behind her, and began to sob in earnest, covering her face with her hands. And when she felt his arms around her, turning her to face him, she thought her heart might break.  
She fought his restraining arms, beating ineffectively on his chest with little hands made weak by hysteria.  
"Don't touch me …" she sobbed desperately, twisting away from his arms. "I hate you … I _hate_ you!"

His arms enfolded her, tight and restraining, pulling her up close against him as he made small shushing noises into her hair.

"Shh …"

She collapsed into his arms, sobbing weakly. "I hate you … I _hate_ you …"

"Shh …" She felt his fingers smoothing out the tangles in her dark hair. "I know. I know. Shh …"

She cried until she could cry no more, and then she lay, exhausted, in his arms. As she felt his breath stir her hair, and felt his fingers stroke tenderly along her shoulders, she knew that she could not live without him.  
"Don't leave me," she whispered at last, her reservoir of words and tears both run dry.  
She felt his laughter ruffle through her hair. "No, my love."  
"Promise me."  
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her wedding ring. "I thought I already had."  
Christine lay limp and exhausted in his arms, turning her face towards his chest. They stayed there for a long time, and Christine found herself drifting off to sleep in his arms as she had so many times before.  
It was not until he believed her asleep that Erik brushed her hair away from her ear and whispered, "I do love you, you know."

She shifted restlessly in his arms, and he sighed. He rose slowly, lifting her as though she weighed no more than a doll, and carried her into her room.

Christine awoke in her own bed the next morning, the sunlight spilling through the window to dapple her pillow.

Erik had cooked her breakfast, and she ate it more to please him than through hunger. He watched her eat, taking nothing himself other than a cup of strong black coffee, and once she had finished and he had wordlessly cleared the table, he took her hand with the chivalrously old-fashioned formality that never failed to wring her heart, and led her into the morning room.

Christine sat down in her armchair, drawing her legs up under herself, momentarily appreciating the sunlight that poured through the window to light the room and caught Erik's mask, transforming it – just for a moment – into dazzling white.

Erik himself remained standing, and she did not press him to sit, knowing how he employed movement to dispel agitation he could not express in words.

He spoke at last.

"I feel the time has come to ask your forgiveness. I … have not been the support to you in this time that I should; and I have come to fear that such strength as you need is not within my power to give."

Christine leaned forward to protest, but he shook his head.

"Please – let me finish." Having said this, however, words seemed to fail him, and he passed his hand through his hair several times as his agitation threatened to get the better of him.

At last, he turned back to her, all formality gone from his mien.

"I do not know how I can begin to explain it to you other than to say that … oh, Christine, I am so afraid."

Christine leaned forward and took his hand, pressing her lips to his palm, wordlessly offering her love even as she did not interrupt. He smiled bleakly at her.

"Perhaps I can only explain by dredging up the past. You must remember how long I loved you even before I dared approach you." Christine blushed, still embarrassed by reminders of his longstanding devotion, but he continued regardless. "It is – what? – eight years now? And never to have known your love … to have spent all my time pining after what could never be attained; that was one thing. But to have held your love; to have heard you sing first thing in the morning, to have been able to touch your hair on the pillow while you slept; to have _known_ you loved me …" His voice faltered. "Tell me, Christine, how am I to bear that loss?"

Christine could not speak. Only now did she realise how cruel fate had been to him: to have tempted him with her love, with the promise of a life together, only to threaten to snatch it all away from him, leaving him in isolation made more unbearable than ever by his brief taste of sunshine.

"Oh, Erik …" She pressed his hand, and still he did not look up. "I take care of myself." She laughed. "Lord knows I hardly need to, you treat me as though I were the child myself! And the doctor says –"

"Christine."

Christine stopped speaking and looked into his eyes.

"Listen to me. The doctor is, for once, quite correct: if we follow the midwife's instructions, the physical danger to you is no greater than to any woman. But Christine …" He withdrew his hands from hers as though her touch caused him extreme pain. "You recall what I said I would do if the child wears my face."

She looked away, tears rising in her eyes, but he caught her face in his hand, forcing her to look at him. "Yes, you remember. And should it come to that – for I _will_ do it, my dear, never doubt of that – you will never forgive me for it." He released her, bitterness seeping into his voice. "Although God knows it would be a kindness greater than any other Christian soul on this mortal plane would show such a child."

Christine could not look at him. Her arm curled protectively around her stomach, in which lay the child she already loved, and her body shook with sobs.

"And so you see." He was standing now, and his voice sounded distant, as though she had already lost him.

"God would not be so cruel," she whispered.

"My dear," his voice breathed over laughter like the rustling of dead autumn leaves, "I pray that it may be so."

Erik and Christine did not have much longer to endure the mounting tension: two weeks later, Erik, whose temper was growing increasingly short through the stress of unbearable and constant anxiety, was seated at his desk writing a viciously-worded letter to the agent who still operated in Paris on his behalf when a breathless messenger wearing the St Cyr livery rapped on the door and handed over a single sheet of thick, expensive writing paper bearing what Erik recognised as St Cyr's scrawling hand.

The note was only one line, but it was sufficient to chill his blood even as he snatched his cloak and hat and seized the messenger's horse before the boy had time to protest.

_It has begun. We dare not move her; come at once._

_St. Cyr._

St Cyr met him at the door. He held out his hand, but Erik was far too distracted to recognise the gesture, and strode into the hall, leaving the Marquis to follow him.

"Where is she?"

St Cyr did not appear to resent the slight; it was likely that he had suffered some measure of Erik's anxiety himself over the past few hours. He passed a hand through his hair, which was dishevelled enough to suggest he had repeated that nervous gesture more than once that afternoon, and replied:

"Upstairs; Meg is with her. It is all over –"

But Erik, already mounting the stairs two at a time, barely registered the latter part of the sentence.

He could hear Meg's soft voice as soon as he reached the landing, and pushed open the door to the darkened chamber with sudden apprehensive hesitation.

His eyes adjusted swiftly to the half-light, and he crossed the room in two strides to kneel at his wife's side. She turned her face into the strip of light patterning her pillow, and raised one hand weakly to gesture across the room. He turned to see a cradle and rose as if in a dream to walk towards it.

He barely even heard the midwife's words, _"It's a girl"_ as he drew the blanket away from the astonishingly small bundle.

He gasped, and heard the soft exhalation of breath from his wife that told him that through her exhaustion she was laughing.

Tears rose unexpectedly to his eyes, and he reached out to touch skin smooth and pure as marble, barely trusting the feeble evidence of his eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Meg usher the midwife from the room and follow her out, closing the door silently behind them. He stared at the tiny, fragile creature lying before him a moment longer before turning to Christine.

She was pale and the dark circles that lay like bruises beneath her eyes spoke of her exhaustion, but as he stepped forward and took the hand that she wearily extended to him, he had never loved her better. He pressed her fingers to his lips and reached out to touch her face. She smiled wanly.

Neither spoke: words were insufficient.

It was the gurgling of the baby that broke the silence; and as Erik blinked back unexpected tears, his eyes met Christine's, and he saw a single tear run down her cheek.

He touched her face, and they both smiled.

_Six months later _

Erik awoke in the still-heavy darkness of early morning to feel Christine stirring beside him.

"Mmm …" Sleepily, he rubbed his face in her hair. "Where are you going?"

She brushed a kiss against his temple. "Rose is crying."

Suddenly he was awake. "I'll go to her."

Christine sank gratefully back into the blankets, watching her husband pad silently out of the room, wrapping a robe around himself. A moment later, the crying ceased, and she could hear Erik's voice, soft and soothing, pass through the walls. She lay back and smiled. Erik adored their daughter. She suspected that, ever assailed by doubt and memories of his own unhappy childhood, his love for Rose was born partly of his desire to make reparation for wrongs of the past, a determination that no other child should ever suffer as he had.

She shouldn't have been surprised, really: he loved children, she had learned. It had not been until some months after their marriage – and even then only by a chance discovery of an unfiled document, for Erik remained yet unwilling to admit altruism – that she learned quite how much local charities for poor relief, and especially for the care of children, benefited from his generosity.

Although he remained uncomfortable around adults, and was easy only around their most immediate society – although he was learning, gradually, to relinquish his lingering resentment for St Cyr – Christine, observing him with children, realised that he was exceptionally good with them. They, of course, were captivated (much as Christine herself had been, she reflected wryly) by his ethereal voice and the lithe magic in his hands; but it was the genuine affection and easy, gentle tenderness with which Erik handled them that astonished her.

She had asked him once why he, who professed to so despise all humankind, so clearly adored children, with their noisy chatter and the padding of small feet and hands on floor and furniture. In response, he had laughed, and kissed her hair.

"When you know there are monsters under the bed, those in the real world suddenly do not seem so frightening."

His voice was light, but Christine understood, and tightened her grip on his hand – just for a moment – under the table.

In the nursery, Erik carefully laid his daughter back in the crib, stroking her thin, fluffy hair gently. She stirred slightly, but did not wake, and Erik smiled. He had never believed that he would be able to love anyone as he loved Christine; indeed, during their long separation, he had tried so hard to ensure that he would never love anyone again! He had so long denied just how dear Christine was to him; and now he frequently felt he might cry with joy at her presence.

And yet here, sleeping peacefully in her white crib, was the evidence that love came in more forms than he had ever dreamed of.

He rose silently, careful not to wake his daughter, and slipped back into his own room. Christine was curled up with the blanket drawn up close around her shoulders, her hair a fluffy, uncontrollable cloud that frequently escaped into his face while he was sleeping. He smiled unconsciously. He wouldn't change it, though; not a thing. Sometimes he felt he must be dreaming; but never, even in the deepest dreams that he had kept locked safely within the most secret chambers of his heart, had he ever imagined this. Never could he have constructed such transcendental happiness; never, if he was honest with himself, had he ever truly believed that life would one day be worth living.

Silently, he slipped into bed beside his wife, and carefully extracted from her hand the book that she had evidently been reading before falling asleep. He glanced at the title: _Cyrano de Bergerac_. He laughed, very softly, and blew out the candle flickering on her bedside table.

Erik settled down to sleep, turning his face towards the pillow and drawing the blanket up around his shoulders, careful not to disturb his wife.

"Erik?"

He smiled. "You little beast. I thought you were asleep."

"Mmm." She snuggled up against him, nuzzling her face against his chest, one arm stealing around his waist. Erik kissed her hair and carefully covered her with the blanket, closing his eyes.

"Erik?"

He opened his eyes reluctantly. "Sometimes I wonder whether you or Rose robs me of the more sleep."

She smiled sleepily, rubbing her face against his shoulder.

"Erik?" she repeated.

"Yes, my love?" Erik acquiesced, giving in to her persistence.

"I love you."

Erik kissed her forehead in reply.

They lay together in the dark, Erik stroking his wife's shoulders tenderly and smoothing his fingers through her hair until he felt her loosen against him and her breathing slow into sleep.

As dawn broke over the thatched roof of their cottage, pricks of sunlight piercing the cracks in the curtains, Erik stirred and stretched. Christine lay beside him, still asleep, her face hidden by her cloud of hair. He smiled and drew the blanket up over her shoulders to protect her from the cool morning air.

Erik rose silently, and went downstairs. He opened the curtains and stood still for a very long time, gazing into the glorious radiance of the morning sunshine flooding over the meadow behind the cottage. Marguerite wound herself around his legs, and he gathered her into his arms and stroked her behind the ears, listening to her rapturous purring mingling with the song of a lark somewhere in the meadow.

"Good morning."

He looked around, startled, and his face broke into a smile. Christine stood in the doorway, her hair tousled and loose over her shoulders. She was cradling Rose, wrapped in a soft white blanket, in her arms. He dropped Marguerite gently to the floor, and walked towards his wife.

"You're up early," he remarked, moving to kiss her in greeting.

She smiled. "_Someone_ woke me up when they thoughtlessly left me all by myself!"

His face crinkled in contrition. "Oh, Christine, I'm sorry … I hadn't meant –"

She stopped his apologies with a kiss. "I'm teasing you." She touched the baby's face lightly. "Rose was crying. And it's such a beautiful day … far too nice to be asleep, really."

She had crossed the kitchen to stand by the window, gazing out into the glorious brightness of the first true morning of spring, clasping Rose close to her. Erik watched her for a moment, offering a silent prayer of wordless thanks for his unimaginable good fortune.

He stepped to her and slipped his arm around her waist, touching the baby in her arms tenderly on the forehead with his left hand. Christine lifted her head to look at him, and her face broke into a smile.

Erik felt Marguerite rub up against his legs, and heard her purr contentedly as she settled down to sleep, wound around his ankles. His arm tightened around his wife's waist, and as she reached up to kiss him, he heard the church bells begin to ring across the fields in the next village.

Rebirth; resurrection; _forgiveness_ … it must have been a sign.

He bent to kiss his wife, and they both laughed as Rose gurgled in her arms. It was a good day for the christening of the newest member of their family.

**_:FIN:_**


End file.
